Pepparkakor (swedish gingerbread cookies)

Today is the first of Advent, a milestone on the Swedish calendar. Although a secular society, this tradition remains strong in Sweden. Every Sunday until Christmas we light one candle in a four candle holder. We bake and eat pepparkakor, and other yummy baked goods.

My homemade Advent candle holder

We also light an electric version of the advent candles, if you ever visit Sweden in the winter, you will find these in nearly every window, cozy and cute!
In Sweden it seems any tradition that involves light and candles have remained strong through the years- my guess is that it helps alleviate some of that darkness in the winter:) Either way, these are lovely traditions that I try to continue in my home!
Here is my recipe for pepparkakor (Swedish gingerbread)

6 oz butter
1 1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon dark corn syrup
2 tablespoons molasses
1 egg
1/4 cup orange juice
3-4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 tablespoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons orange zest

Turn oven on to 400 degrees.
Cream butter and sugar, and stir in all the other moist ingredients.
In a separate bowl, sift together all the dry ingredients.
Slowly add flour mixture to wet ingredients, while mixing. Add enough flour to make a stiff and workable dough.
Flour a large surface, a rolling pin, a metal spatula, and the edges of your favorite cookie cutters.
Roll out the dough to about a 1/8" thickness, cut your cookie shapes, and transfer to cookie sheet. Put in oven, and watch carefully! Usually it takes about 5 minutes to see edges turning brown. Take them out right away, they burn easily.
Let them cool on a wire rack.
When I make the batches closer to Christmas, I usually make a simple decorator frosting of powdered sugar and water, and pipe some patterns, faces, and other fun things on the cookies!