Grandma’s Pepper Knockers
by Deborah deBakker
December 1999
December 1999 marks 25 years since my Swedish grandmother died. So she’s been on my mind this month, especially when I bake a batch of her special cookies—pepper knockers—for Christmas.
My Swedish grandmother was actually born in Canada, in the village of Norman, just west of Rat Portage. Around the turn of the century, Swedes looking for a better life gravitated to northwestern Ontario, where they felt at home amid the fragrant forests, blue lakes and thick snow. Grandma’s family were the Pearsons of Pearson Street. I always thought it was a fine thing that the family had a street named after them, even if it was more of a lane than a street. The village of Norman, or at least its first two letters, evolved into the middle syllable of the town of Kenora, flanked by the K E of Keewatin and the R A of Rat Portage.
Although Grandma was born in Canada, she unwittingly lost her Canadian citizenship at eighteen when she married my grandfather. This quirk of immigration law applied because she had married a non-Canadian—not surprisingly, a Swede. Some years later, Grandpa swore allegiance to the king and took out his Canadian citizenship, but the law didn’t seem to work in reverse. Grandma remained a foreigner, even though she never left Canada until years later, to visit her married daughter in New York. At sixty-five, she applied for a Canadian passport so she could travel to Sweden for the first time, but she was turned down, and told she had to become a Canadian first. “I was so mad, I could have spit!” she said, which was as close as she came to swearing. “I’m as Canadian as anyone!” This was around the time of Trudeaumania, and she held Mr. Trudeau personally responsible for her difficulties with the immigration department. After all, despite her lack of citizenship, she had voted Liberal all her life.
In Kenora, and in her later years in Thunder Bay, Grandma made raising a family and keeping house into an art, pre-dating Martha Stewart by about sixty years. If she walked into my house today, she’d die. Grandma had a tiny kitchen where she worked alone in her full-length apron, turning out meatballs with gravy, cinnamon buns, and salads made of leaf lettuce from the garden, sprinkled with vinegar and sugar. She had little patience for children or grownups who wanted to watch or even help cook. For the most part she made traditional Swedish food, which is to say simple, verging on bland. We children loved it.
She also made more exotic fare: pickled herring, called sill, and headcheese, a sort of meat loaf that did not actually involve a pig’s head, at least not when the kids were around. My mom never made us eat that stuff. At home, we got to eat regular boomer food, red jello and hamburgers and French fries with lots of ketchup.
But I have digressed from the pepper knockers, which Grandma made every Christmas. To describe them as ginger snap cookies hardly does them justice. They are more rich and crispy and fragrant. Like all the best things my grandmother made, they are easy to make and look good on a white plate. They have no pretensions--they are Lutheran cookies, after all.
The correct name for them is pepparcockars, but as children, we found “pepper knockers” easier to say. The recipe is the essence of simplicity: butter, flour, molasses and spices: ginger (which is ‘pepper’ in Swedish), cinnamon and cloves. These were all things Grandma would have in the house. These days I keep Becel in the fridge—I only buy butter at Christmas to make the pepper knockers.
One of the things I love about making pepper knockers is that the recipe makes more than a hundred cookies, plenty for everyone. Another advantage is that the raw dough tastes, frankly, like molasses, so there is not much of a shrinkage problem before it gets baked.
Of course, pepper knockers must be served with coffee. When I was about ten, my mother taught me how to make coffee, exactly the same way Grandma did. You filled the Corning Ware percolator with water, measured the grounds into the metal basket, then turned the element on high. When the pot boiled over, you lifted it off, turned the element down to simmer, wiped up the mess and put the pot back. Done.
My kids turn up their noses at a lot of the things I cook, but they do like pepper knockers. My daughter in university even makes them herself. She loses the recipe every year, and phones home for it in early December. Last week, when most of her friends in Kingston were studying, she spent a day baking pepper knockers. She wrapped them in packages of ten, tied them up with ribbons, and delivered them to friends all around the student ghetto. It makes me happy to think of those young students eating the pepper knockers and drinking coffee, feeling warm and satisfied.
As long as someone is eating these cookies at Christmas, I can picture my Grandma looking down and saying, “Ts, ts, no more! You’re going to spoil your supper.”
Grandma’s Pepper Knockers
1 ½ c. butter
2 c. sugar
½ c. molasses
2 eggs
4 c. flour
4 tsp. baking soda
3 tsp. ginger
2 tsp. cloves
2 tsp. cinnamon
Cream butter and sugar. Beat in molasses and eggs. Stir together all dry ingredients, then gradually add to the wet ingredients. Dough will be stiff.
Roll a teaspoon of dough into a ball, then roll the ball in sugar. Flatten a bit with a cookie press or the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar. Bake at 350° for 8 to 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them—there is a small window between underdone and burnt!
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