Grammy’s Spice Cookies Recipe (2024)

These are Swedish pepparkakor with icing. Here are a few great tips for making them (passed along from my Swedish kin): 1)Make the dough ahead of time and let it sit on the counter for several hours to blend the spices. 2) Roll into a tube and freeze until you need them -- just slice and bake (don't need to thaw) 3) Forego the icing and, instead, roll dough into balls and smash with a glass you've dipped in white sugar (great job for kids!). God Jul everyone

These are easy to overtake and if you are a spice nut, an addition of cinnamon and cloves and a 1/2 teaspoon more molasses would crack open that pall surrounding you tastebuds. I'll make these again; the grandkids devoured them. For us foggies, no icing needed. (I did add a sprinkle of lemon zest to the icing...good.)

Really delicious recipe. Two notes on the frosting:
1) This recipe made a ton of frosting. I used maybe half of it and am saving the rest for another batch of cookies.
2) The frosting makes these cookies extraordinary. I was out of Irish whiskey, so I used 2 tablespoons of good bourbon. The frosting has a strong whiskey taste, and it turns what is essentially a gingersnap (a good gingersnap, but a gingersnap) into an excellent, adult-tasting cookie.

Loved, but needs some tweaks. 1 -- NYT should update the recipe to indicate that the butter needs to be separated; I used all of it in the batter (as have others!). Resulted in half of them burning quickly. 2 -- def. up all the spices up to a teaspoon; even slightly more if you want. 3. -- halve the confectioners sugar and the dairy in the frosting recipe; keep other ingredients the same. A challenge -- shape/size. Couldn't get mine to look like full cookies. Only tea/macaron size. Thoughts?

These are great. I turned into sandwich cookies to mail to friends and everyone loved them!

An excellent cookie that works well even with a standard gluten free flour. To amp up the ginger flavor, try adding a chopped 4oz package of crystallized ginger. Heaven!

Woops! Made these again a year later and mistakenly used all the butter for the dough, rather than hold out one-half stick for the frosting. Of course, gooey and unrollable and baked in record time (!) but happily still delicious. Next time... baking with grandchildren delight but minus concentration.

I'm about to make these cookies for the 3rd time and wanted to share the one twist I discovered that take these babies over the top. Add a bit of fresh orange juice and - very important - orange zest - to the frosting. You judge the consistency to your liking. Now you have the best holiday cookie I have ever made! Rave reviews; could not stop eating them. Bon appetite!

I accidentally improved on these when I skipped loading the last of the batter on a new, cold cookie sheet and instead dumped the balls on a sheet that was 5 minutes from the oven with the first round.The first round was exactly like the photo, and great. The last round, which spread because of the hot pan and did not need as long to cook, became indescribably, deliciously crisp and thin and instantly melted on the tongue. I prefer them with a hot pan!!!

Please note! Do NOT use the full two sticks of butter in the batter - set aside 4 Tbs of butter to use in the icing. We ended up missing this part of the instruction - our cookies taste great but are much too soft for the flavor profile.

Ten minutes in the oven almost burnt mine, set the oven for eight minutes then check frequently. I added chopped crystallized ginger and doubled the cinnamon and clove, and the spice profile was great. I used 1 tsp orange extract in the icing instead of vanilla for a better complementary flavor. Really nice with or without the icing.

These make a wonderful change up for an ice cream sandwich. I made strawberry ice cream and the cookies one day and put the sandwiches together the next day. They kept beautifully for a week. Not because I have that kind of will power. I was out of town.
I think blueberry ice cream or peach will go well with the molasses spice flavor too.

Oh boy are these good! I like them iced or not, but my husband's vote is for iced. They are easy to make, and not necessarily a Christmas cookie but stands up to the competition. Note that they soften in the tin.

Three people commented on how delicious the frosting is (without any alcohol added).

Easy. I got about 30 cookies from this recipe, and agree with others that the icing can be easily be cut in half. The spices are fragrant, and pleasantly assertive.

For 2 sticks of butter in batter (instead of 12 Tb), I used 2.5 c flour, 1 c sugar (reduced from 1-1/3 but still sweet enough), 1/3 c molasses, 1 egg, 2 to baking soda, 1.5 ts cinnamon, 1 ts ginger, and 1 ts allspice (no ground cloves on hand). Rolled in granulated sugar. Came out a nice consistency.

I want to echo another commenter and urge NYT Cooking to PLEASE list in the ingredients when an ingredient is "divided." I have made these many times and this time I pretty much ruined them because I was busy and forgot that the ingredients list is not what you put in the bowl (talking about the butter here). It's a pretty standard practice in listing ingredients, calling the reader's attention to the fact that you only put in a portion of the butter, not all of it. PLEASE!!!

The spice cookies were pretty good - not anything that I hadn't tried before - though the icing was too sweet and overpowered the cookies (and this is coming from someone with a sweet tooth). If I were to use the icing again, it would be in sandwich-style cookies or with a much larger base than what is called for.

If you happened to add ALL the butter. You can try scooping teaspoon sized portions, bake and then use the frosting to make sandwich cookies.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who this happened to, you need to rewrite the recipe and list the butter amounts separately for the DOUGH and the ICING. As in “12 tbsp butter” for icing and “4 tbsp” butter for icing. Otherwise people (like me) are bound to use all the butter in the dough and ruin the whole batch.

I think the reviewers saying you can prepare less frosting must be scraping a miserly portion on top because my batch matched the number of cookies perfectly, and I certainly love a thick helping! The Irish whiskey in the frosting is perfect. Would definitely make again and up the spices as some have suggested.

Make these! Now! The perfect holiday cookie!

be sure to leave enough space between cookies on the pan. maybe also make them a little smaller than suggested. great chewy and crispy texture. added some fresh ginger to mine and made with lemon frosting since I didn't have whiskey. would like to try with the whiskey flavored frosting in the future

Be sure to move your cookie sheets to the middle oven rack and watch the time and/or reduce the temp. At nine minutes mine were starting to burn. Going to try them again. Even over baked they still tasted good, great spice mix. and I didn’t even use the frosting. I will next time I’ll get it right and do the frosting. I betcha they are fab when you get it right the first time, or second.

Absolute YUM. Don't forget the icing - it give a sweet top-note to these spicy treats.Have made it several times - everyone loves.

Great without the icing

for us it made like 50 some

Everyone loves these. No frosting. Rolled in sugar before baking. Perfect.

These are the best cookies ever, however the icing is WAY too sweet - definitely cut back on the confectioner sugar!

Very Christmassy (which was what I wanted). I upped the spices to a tbsp, although next time I may ease on the ginger and cloves (I had recently powdered them with a pestle, so maybe they were extra pungent). Instead of the icing I did a button of dark chocolate. They were gone in a day.