Pepparkakor - Iced Swedish Ginger Biscuits

I have always loved Swedish spiced thin biscuits and knew they would be the perfect platform to turn my paper cut shapes into edible creations! I haven't been able to find many recipes online using British measures for the ingredients and had some disastrous trial runs! I love this post that I found on Swedish Spoon but I couldn't get my head around Swedish 'dls' or American 'cups' on other websites. I wanted to transfer my paper cutting technique to baking and thought a winter scene would lend itself perfectly. Please feel free to print off my templates below to make your own version. Tag me on instagram to share!

Here is a recipe I've adapted from Nordic Kitchen Stories...

1. Heat oven to Oven 190°C fan.

2. On a medium heat, melt the sugar, butter, black treacle, golden syrup and water until the sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes.

3. Blend the flour and bicarbonate with the spices. Pour the melted butter and sugar mixture into the flour and spices. The mixture is fairly loose but it's now going to be refrigerated for roughly 8 hours, divide into 4 and wrap in clingfilm. This dough can be kept in the fridge for a week or frozen for up to a 3 months.

4. Download my template below to get your biscuit shapes. Take one of the four portions of the dough from the fridge and lightly flour your surface and roll out the dough very thinly to about 3mm thick. Lay the paper templates on top of the dough and trace round using a knife. Once all your shapes are cut, peel away the excess dough. With the help of a thin utensil such as a knife or fish slice, transfer them carefully to lined baking trays. It's helpful to have similar thicknesses together on one tray so they bake at the same rate.

5. Bake the biscuits for 5-6 minutes. They should start to feel hard around the edges as they cool and eventually become really crisp – they need to have a nice ‘snap’. Store in an airtight container for several weeks.

- If you choose to make your own royal icing, you can do this with 1 egg white, around 225g icing sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice. Beat the egg white until firm, then add sifted sugar, a spoonful at a time, mixing it in well before adding the next spoonful. Once you have added all the sugar add the lemon juice. If needed, add a little more sugar to be a reasonably firm icing. I use an icing bottle similar to this one on ebay. I find icing really hard though, even though I'm confident at drawing!