Baking brunkager
Brunkager are a type of crunchy Danish Christmas gingerbread cookie.
The recipe uses potassium carbonate (Danish: potaske) as a baking agent, which makes the cookies crunchier and browner.
The cookies will be vegan as long as you use vegan butter!
Prep time
- Dough: 20-30 min
- Resting time in fridge: approx. 4 hours (you can store the dough in the fridge for a few days before using it if you want)
- Baking time: 5-8 min
Tools
- oven
- grater
- cling film (alternatvely: baking parchment and a small container)
Sources
Ingredients
- 250 g wheat flour
- 125 g (vegan) butter
- 125 g brown sugar
- 70 - 80 g maple syrup
- 80 g peeled and chopped almonds
- 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp. powdered ginger (you can additionally add some fresh finely chopped ginger if you want)
- ½ tsp. allspice
- ½ tsp. ground cloves
- 1 tsp. potassium carbonate
- Grated orange peel from ½ to 1 organic orange
- 1 tbsp. orange juice thereof
1. Blanch almonds: Put almonds in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let sit for a few minutes until the skins can be easily removed.
Chop the peeled almonds coarsely (you can also just leave them whole or halve them).
2. Grate the peel of ½ to 1 organic orange.
Save 1 tbsp. of the orange's juice and dissolve the potassium carbonate in the juice. Keep this liquid for step 5.
3. Put flour, spices, orange peel and almonds into bowl, and mix well with a spoon/fork. (Keep the juice with potassium carbonate for step 5.)
4. Put (vegan) butter, brown sugar and syrup into a pot and occasionally stir at low to medium heat on a stovetop until the butter is melted and the brown sugar dissolved. The mixture should not boil or get too hot to touch.
Take the pot from the stove.
5. Stir all the ingredients from the bowl and the potassium carbonate juice (from step 2) bit by bit into the pot with the handwarm syrup-butter-sugar mixture.
Stir/knead well with a spoon for a while until thoroughly combined.
6. Let the dough cool off for a bit and put it onto a sheet of cling-film. (If you don't have clingfilm, you could put the dough into a small plastic/glass container covered with baking parchment.)
7. Wrap the dough into the clingfilm and form into an oblong sausage-like shape.
Then, let this dough-sausage rest in the fridge for at least 4 hours until it has hardened. You can also easily just leave it in the fridge overnight.
8. Preheat oven to 200 °C (or 180 °C if you use the convection setting). Meanwhile, cut the cool, hardened dough with a sharp knife as thinly as possible and put the pieces on a baking tray.
9. Put the baking tray with the brunkager into the preheated oven for 5-8 minutes, depending on how brown you like them (and on the characteristics of your oven)
Note: The brunkager should be still somewhat soft when taking them out of the oven. After having taken them out, let them sit for a minute or so to harden a bit before trying to move them off the tray.
10. Put the semi-hard brunkager on a grate (or on plates) to let them cool and harden completely. Do not put them into a container until they are completely hardened and cold, otherwise they might retain moisture and get too soft.
Store them in an airtight container and (hopefully) enjoy :)
If you have any questions, suggestions, experiences etc., you can e-mail me at fruit@tilde.town if you want! ∎
Background texture: candy1.jpg from Paul Bourke's texture library
