1. Invite friends to the kitchen.
2. Provide tools, ingredients and instructions.
3. Add glögg as needed, and stir vigourously.

We had our traditional (if 4 years can be called a tradition) Swedish “julstök” (Christmas bake) yesterday: cooking and baking in the company of friends. We now have enough gingerbread cookies, lussebullar (saffron buns), knäck (toffee), chocolate sweets and fudge to last us for a month at least.

All of it’s rather experimental, really. For the knäck, for example, we tried using treacle instead of golden syrup this year, and it didn’t work as well as expected… but the same treacle was good for gingerbread dough. This year’s gingerbread cookies came out better than ever, pleasantly spicy and dark.

Gingerbread cookies are my favourites, really, both to make and to eat. It’s fun to try and fit as many as possible onto the rolled-out dough, to waste as little as possible. And they taste good!

Fewer people came to join us than last year, and one large family had to decline at the last moment, so we’ve got a whole lot of glögg left over… well, that’ll save us the bother of carrying it home next year!