Wishing cookies are my personal favorite holiday cookie. They’re a Swedish Christmas cookie and they came to my family via Minnesota, where my mom grew up. Minnesota has a large Scandinavian population and though we don’t have any Norwegian or Swedish heritage, my moms family adopted a lot of their neighbors holiday traditions and those have passed down to us kids. Swedish wishing cookies, which to my understanding are also called Swedish ginger cookies or pepparkakor. They’re a sort of gingerbread or gingersnap cookie. Crisp, well-spiced, lightly-molasses flavored cookies. They are flavored with ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and (optionally) orange zest. Now, I’m not the biggest molasses fan, so it’s a bit surprising that I love these cookies so much, and that they were always my Christmas cookie pick without fail. But these cookies are not overpoweringly molasses flavored. And molasses is so good for you, it’s a great source of iron, calcium, magnesium, B6 and more. We all eat cookies for health reasons, right??? I kid of course, but hey it doesn’t hurt!
What makes them wishing cookies?
The tradition behind the cookies goes: take a cookie and make a wish. Place the cookie in your palm and press on the center to break it. If it breaks into three pieces eat it without speaking and then your wish is said to come true! The fact (yes, fact*), that you get to eat cookies and have wishes GUARANTEED (yes, guaranteed**) to come true makes these the best cookies to ever exist in the entire history of cookie existence.*not fact **not guaranteed It’s probably pretty clear why these cookies were my favorite growing up. Though I enjoy the silly wish making as much now as an adult! And if your cookie doesn’t break into three pieces on your first try, well that’s just a reason to pick up a second cookie I think!
Veganizing these cookies:
Turning cookies vegan is actually quite straight forward. It can be as simple as swapping liquid for eggs. In these cookies I use aquafaba, which is the liquid you’ll find in a can of beans or from cooking beans from scratch. Choose chickpeas or white beans, and I prefer buying no salt added beans, but it’s ok if you have salted beans. If you don’t want to use aquafaba, you can use your choice of non-dairy milk instead, but the aquafaba makes a crisper cookie. Then of course there is the butter, but that’s even easier as you just use vegan butter! These days there are a lot of options, and any will work great but I do recommend that you use the kind that comes in a stick and not a tub. The kind of butter that comes in a tub is made for easy spreading and can be softer and/or have higher water contents making them not ideal for baking.
Making the Swedish wishing cookies:
The dough is straight forward to make, it’s really just your average cookie dough. Whip up the vegan butter, beat in the sugar (& molasses) and the vegan “egg” which in this case is aquafaba, then mix in the dry ingredients. The dough needs to be chilled so that the [vegan] butter firms up, the flour absorbs the moisture, and the gluten has a chance to relax so the cookies are easy to roll out and don’t lose their shape while baking. Typically you’d form the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and then leave it for at least two hours in the fridge to chill. However, in a tip I learned from Smitten Kitchen you can fast forward the chilling process by rolling out the dough right away between sheets of parchment paper then chilling the rolled dough for 15 minutes in the freezer or at least 30 minutes in the fridge. The chilled dough is easy to cut with your star-shaped cookie cutter and transfer to the baking sheet. Take the scraps left behind after cutting and reform into a ball and roll out to cut more stars from. If your kitchen is warm and the dough starts to get soft when you re-roll it out, then just stick it in the freezer for a few minutes to firm it back up.
How thin to roll out the cookies?
You want to roll them out around 1/8″ or maybe a bit thicker to around 3/16ths of an inch. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t pull out a ruler when I roll out these cookies! But if you’re newer to cookie baking then do grab a ruler to measure. A thicker cookie is more likely to remain soft in the center and will be on the longer end of the baking time range, and a thinner cookie gets crisper but will start to get overdone more quickly as well.
The decorative icing:
These cookies are frosted with a simple powdered sugar icing made with vanilla extract your choice of non-dairy milk. If you want a whiter icing use water instead of milk. These cookies don’t have to be decorated all fancy. If you have kids around, hand some piping bags over to them to swirl icing on top! You can even just use a butter knife to swipe some icing overtop. The icing contrasts beautifully with the spiced cookies, delivering a burst of vanilla sugar to every bite! The icing will harden after a bit, and once it does you can stack the cookies to store them. I hope you enjoy these vegan wishing cookies! And may all your wishes come true! You might also want to check out and bake my cinnamon mocha bars and peppermint candy cane cookies! If you make these Swedish wishing cookies, leave a comment below and rate the recipe on the recipe card. And please share your photos with me on Instagram, tag @thecuriouschickpea and #thecuriouschickpea. I love seeing your recreations!
*Aquafaba is the liquid in a can of chickpeas or white beans. Shake the can to loosen the starches that settle on the bottom of the can, then strain it from the beans. Use immediately or freezer for longer storage. Adapted from the 1985 edition of the Better Homes and Garden Cookies for Christmas Cookbook.
