Norwegian Cookies -- The Thin Gingersnap That Holds the Line

Sophie texted a photo of Ingrid eating limpa bread. Ingrid is two. The bread is in both her hands. She is grinning. The line continues. The line is not metaphysical. The line is the bread, in the hands, going into the mouth, of a child whose great-great-grandmother brought the recipe across an ocean. The line is the bread. Sophie is pregnant again. Another baby. Due next year. I will be a great-grandmother of two. The cheat sheet on the refrigerator is going to need updating. I have a small piece of graph paper taped inside the pantry door with a family tree on it. I update it after every birth, every wedding, every death. The paper is folded at the corners now and slightly yellowed at the edges. The tree has many branches. The branches keep coming. Sophie's daughter Ingrid is walking now. She walked across the kitchen and grabbed my leg and looked up at me and said "Mor" — the Swedish for grandmother. Sophie is teaching her Swedish, or as much Swedish as Sophie remembers, which is enough for the basics. Ingrid said "Mor" with the perfect Swedish O, the rounded back-of-the-mouth O that only a child still learning sounds can pronounce. I cried. Sophie cried. The dog watched us with the patience of a saint. I cooked Pepparkakor this week. Thin gingersnaps with the secret pepper. Three dozen. The Damiano Center: the regular Thursday. The soup is the soup. The conversations are the conversations. The week is held by the Thursday. I do not know what I would do without the Thursday. The Thursday is the structural element of the week. The structural element does not collapse if the rest of the week goes sideways. The Thursday holds. The lake was iron gray. The kind of gray Paul loved. He used to say: "That is the gray that means weather is coming." He was always right. I miss being told. I miss being told what the lake means by a man who knew what the lake meant. I have learned to read the lake on my own. I am, at this point, an adequate reader. I am not as good as Paul was. I am better than I would have been if I had not had to learn. It is enough. It has to be. And on a morning like this, with the lake doing what the lake does and the dog at my feet and the bread on the counter and the kitchen warm enough to live in, it is. The phone rings less than it used to. Not because fewer people are calling, but because the people who call are mostly the family, and the family has settled into a rhythm — Peter daily, Anna twice a week, Sophie weekly, Elsa biweekly, Karin Sundays, Astrid Sundays. The phone rings predictably. I pick up predictably. The predictability is the love at this stage of life. The lake from the kitchen window has been doing what the lake does for as long as there has been a lake. The lake has carried fish and ships and the bodies of drowned sailors and the names of Ojibwe villages and the granite-cold of melted glaciers. The lake does not notice the lives along its shore. The lives notice the lake. That is the deal. That has always been the deal. It is enough.

These are the cookies I made this week — three dozen, thin as paper, with the pepper that makes them Pepparkakor and not just gingersnaps. I have been making them long enough that my hands know the dough before my head does, and this week, with Ingrid’s voice still in my ears saying “Mor” and Sophie’s news still settling in my chest, I needed to make something that my hands already knew. The recipe is Scandinavian the way this family is Scandinavian: slightly adapted, carried across water, still recognizable. You roll them thin. That is the whole secret. You roll them as thin as you think you can, and then you roll them thinner.

Norwegian Cookies (Pepparkakor)

Prep Time: 25 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 1 hr 35 min (includes chilling) | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 1 tablespoon cold water

Instructions

1. Mix dry ingredients. Whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar. Beat softened butter and 3/4 cup sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg, molasses, and cold water, beating until well combined.
3. Combine and form dough. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until a smooth dough forms. Divide dough in half, flatten each half into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
4. Preheat and prepare. Heat oven to 375°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Roll thin. On a lightly floured surface, roll one disk of dough to 1/8-inch thickness — as thin as you think you can manage, then a little thinner. Cut into rounds or holiday shapes with a 2-inch cutter.
6. Bake. Transfer cut cookies to prepared baking sheets. Sprinkle lightly with granulated sugar. Bake 8–10 minutes, until the edges are just set and the centers look dry. Watch carefully — they go from golden to overdone quickly.
7. Cool. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They will crisp as they cool. Repeat with remaining dough.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 78 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 10g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 45mg