Monday Recipe Danish Pepper Nuts

At Christmas I can't help but bake recipes that call for spices, especially gingerbread. There is something about the smell of cinnamon and ginger that just screams Christmas to me. 

I got this recipe from an article in The Telegraph magazine a couple of weeks ago in which there was an interesting selection of Danish Christmas recipes. These sounded the most interesting to me so naturally I had to try them! I’m not sure how correct my attempt at these is, my research into these was blighted by a lot of conflicting information.

The following has been summarised from Wikipedia:
Pfeffernüsse are small, firm, round biscuits, sometimes with ground nuts. The name translates to pepper nuts, which describes their spicy taste and the fact that some recipes do contain nuts (walnuts or almonds). They do not necessarily contain black pepper, Danish recipes call for white pepper.

And this is where the conflicts arise, as you can see from below as my recipe does not call for pepper of any kind and the article claimed that the name just comes from the warmth of the spices as there is no pepper in them. Further research I conducted uncovered recipes containing everything from pepper (both black and white), cardamom and even mace! But when baked they do look like the pictures of pepper nuts I found on Google, so I’m just going to stick with this version as I know that I like them! If any Danish folks to read this post please comment below and correct me on the recipe! 

Makes 120
Ingredients

375g plain flour, plus extra to dust
½ tsp baking powder
½ freshly grated nutmeg
½ ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
175g salted butter
180g soft, dark brown sugar
1 egg, beaten

Method

In a large bowl; sift together the flour, baking powder and spices. Melt the butter and stir it into the flour mix. Add the egg and the sugar, and then knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Leave the dough to rest for an hour at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to gas 4/180 C, then shape the dough into small balls, about 1.5 – 2 cm in diameter. Place them on a lined baking tray, leave a little space between them (doesn’t need to be a big space as they don’t spread much). Bake for 10 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

Apparently these keep for up to four weeks in an airtight tin.