Ginger Spice

Yes, I did go to a Spice Girls concert once but that's not what this post is about.

This time of the year, Swedes consume A LOT of ginger thins, or pepparkakor as we call it. We eat them all year around but the holiday season is the peak. Pepparkakor was plentiful already back 1,800 B.C. in Mesopotamia, because they kept long and wasn't attacked by mildew. Roman soldiers used to keep pepparkakor in their rations. In the 15th century nuns in the nunnery at Vadstena baked pepparkakor for medicinal reasons; the spicy and sweet cookies were thought to help with digestion. The Swedish "pepparkaka" refers to old receipes where pepper was one of the medicinal ingredients. Pepper has also been a term used for spices in general.

One of my favourite brand of pepparkakor (except for homemade ones) is Anna's (of course!). Anna's was founded in 1929 by two north Swedes, sisters Anna and Emma Karlsson, who ran a domestic household school and a bakery in Stockholm. The cookies became so popular that the bakery turned into a company and in 1945 the factory was moved to what is now the Stockholm suburbs. 1963 the company was bought by the Mattsson family who still owns it. In 1978 Anna's went abroad and today the company produce over 3,000 tonnes cookies annually, of which 60 % is exported and sold e.g. at IKEAs around the world. In Sweden, Anna's has 45 employees but the cookies are also produced at other locations such as Calgary, Canada, where 500 tonnes cookies come out of the owen.

Swedes are perhaps a bit traditional and prefer the original flavour but in other parts of the world, Anna's has experimented with mint, orange, almond and other flavours. Swedes are more for the combos, such as the original flavour with blue cheese (roquefort or gorgonzola). I know, I didn't believe when I first heard about a few years back, but it's delicious!