A good recipe for “Springerle”, a traditional German Xmas cookie, there are many around but this time I took precise records to ensure consistent results.

My intention was to make somewhat smaller Springerle quickly, and the key point is a slight anis smell, some anis seeds, and nicely developed “foot” of each cookie.

The results turned out very well, and in the meantime, all have been consumed.

The “foot” is clearly visible, so are the anis seeds.

The recipe is adapted from an old book, a famous general cooking book of Ms. Paula Horn, but it is lacking some precise measures and temperatures.

Apart from the recipe, you will also need a roller, similar to this one.

250 g of Eggs, (weight includes the shell)
500 g of powdered sugar

Combine and beat it very thoroughly to a creamy mass.

Mix in 500 g of freshly sifted flour, mixed with 3 g of powdered anis, and 1 g of sodium bicarbonate dissolved in about 10 mL of warm water.

Rest the dough for 30 minutes, then roll it to about 1 cm thickness. Don’t add too much flour when rolling.

Then uniformly push in the carved roller to leave impressions. Cut to rectangular pieces and put them on a non-stick paper, lightly sprinkled with anis seeds. Keep these 18-24 hours at room temperature so that the cookies dry, on an flat surface, so the cookies won’t deform.

Then bake without touching the cookies first, 18 minutes at 150°C upper/lower heat should be just fine. The final cookies were about 8 mm thick, before baking. Thicker cookies may take longer, just ensure that they stay white, only the edges can turn very lightly brown. Don’t worry about the ammonia smell.

Once they come out of the oven, they may still be a little soft, don’t touch them yet.

After letting them rest for 2 weeks, they should be pretty hard, but delicious.

A new recipe for delicious christmas cookies, called, “Honigkuchen”, say, honey cookies:

Prepare a mixure of 250 g wheat flour, 100 g rye wholegrain flower, 15 g christmas spices (anis, cinnamon, etc.), add,

300 g of honey – heat so that it is fully liquid but don’t boil

2.5 g potash (potassium carbonate), 5 g hirschhornsalz (ammonium bicarbonate) – dissolve these salts in about 10 mL of warm water (don’t worry if it doesn’t all full dissolve), add to the mixture.

Mix and kneed to a thorough dough, let it rest about 2 days at room temperature, well covered.

For cookies about 8 mm thick, then bake at 175°C for 15 minutes.

For a glossy surface you can paint them with condensed milk before baking.

Earlier recipe, here: Christmas Time: Honigkuchen (honey based cookies)