Orange Chocolate Cookies

I have to apologize - these are no Plätzchen! But I was craving for something with chocolate to finalize my Christmas cookies selection, so I came up with these quadruple chocolate cookies with lot of orange in them. Besides, the recipe is 100% vegan  - it’s always good to have at least one vegan (and thus also lactose free) option when receiving guests :)

For about 25 small cookies you need:

• 125g vegan margarine


• 1 cup all-purpose flour


• 1,5 tsp baking powder


• 3 Tbsp sugar


• 3 Tbsp cocoa powder


• a pinch of salt


• 8g vanilla sugar


• 1 tsp dried orange peel powder


• 3 Tbsp candied orange, in small cubes


• 100g vegan chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used a mixture of rice milk chocolate, vegan white chocolate, and dark chocolate, about 35g each)


• 2 Tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice


• about 100g dark chocolate with orange flavour for the coating

Combine all dry ingredients in a baking bowl. Add margarine, cut in small cubes, and work with your fingertips until fine and crumbly. Add orange juice and work the dough into a ball. With your hands, take about walnut-sized pieces of dough and form them into round cookies. Bake in a preheated oven (190 C) about 15 minutes, or until firm from the outside but not too dry form the inside.
Let the cookies cool on a rack. In the meantime, melt the orange-flavoured chocolate in bain-marie or in the microwave. Dip one side of each cookie in the melted chocolate and place on a plate. Let dry before eating or storing!

Linzer Schnitten

I first tasted Linzer Torte in Vienna some years ago, and immediately became a fan. The combination of hazelnut, spices, and jam together with the crumbly sticky texture is just heavenly. This recipe brings you the same flavours and texture but in a miniature size!

These cookies are much easier to bake than one might first think. You just make the dough, roll it out, cover first with jam, then a criss-cross-pattern of dough stripes, bake, and cut into small cookies. That’s it! Be careful with the clover, though; better use a bit less than too much, or the other flavours don’t stand any chance.

For about 50 cookies you need:

• 300g flour (I used spelt 1050)


• 100g ground hazelnuts


• 80g sugar


• 1 tsp baking powder


• a pinch of salt


• 1 tsp cinnamon (Ceylon, if possible)


• 1 pinch of ground cloves (or more, if you like a stronger taste)


• 200g butter or vegan margarine


• about 50ml (vegan) milk


• 100g red currant jam


• 80 g raspberry jam


• one egg yolk and 1 Tbsp milk for the wash (optional)

Combine flour, hazelnut, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and cloves in a baking bowl. Add butter (cut in small cubes) and work with your fingertips until fine and crumbly. Add enough milk so that you can form the dough into a ball.

Take about ⅔ of the dough and roll it out into a rectangular form (mine was 25cm*35cm). Place the rectangle on an oven pan covered with a parchment paper. (If you want, you can roll the dough out on the parchment paper already - that way, you don’t need to worry about whether it will break when you move it!) Combine both jams in a bowl and spread them evenly on the dough.

Now, roll the rest of the dough about 3 mm thin. Cut out long stripes about 0,5cm wide with a knife or with a pastry wheel. Arrange the stripes to form a criss-cross pattern as in the picture. If you want, you can brush the stripes with egg yolk and milk - this gives a very beautiful colour to the cookies!

Bake in a preheated oven (190 C) about 25 minutes, or until thoroughly cooked. Let cool, then cut into long rectangular cookies, about 2cm wide and 7cm long.

P.S. I first tasted Linzer Torte in Café Goldegg, a coffee shop in Vienna that just might have the best coffee in the world. The cakes were awesome as well. Service was impeccable. And yet: I’ll never go to Café Goldegg again. Why? Because happy children are not welcome there. Every time we went there with a crying child, it was just fine. But when we once managed to have five happy children with us, it was a problem. The owner came personally to tell us that loud laughter was not allowed in a coffee shop. I mean, REALLY. How screwed-up is that?

Zedernbrot - Almond Cookies with Lemon Icing

These cookies with a very misleading name might just have reached my top 3 of best Christmas cookies ever! The name is deceiving, since Zeder is actually German for cedar, yet (luckily!) the cookies have no cedar in them. Instead, Zeder refers to Italian, where cedro stands for citron (citrus medica) - and yes, there’s a lot of lemon in Zedernbrot!

Zedernbrot cookies are very easy to do, they are not too sweet, and they combine two of my favourite flavours - almond and lemon. Besides, the consistency is very pleasant - like chewy marshmallow. (If you do it right, that is. I forgot to check on my second batch and it stayed too long in the oven - and they got too dry..)

For about 30 small rectangular cookies you need:

• 1 egg white


• 125g powder sugar


• a pinch of salt


• 200g ground almonds


• zest of 1 lemon


• 3 tsp lemon juice


• a bit of flour for rolling the dough out

For the icing:

• 100g powder sugar


• lemon juice

Beat the egg white with a pinch of salt until soft peaks form. Add sugar and continue beating until glossy and firm. Add lemon zest, lemon juice, and almonds, and stir with a wooden spoon until all ingredients are well combined.  Place the dough in the fridge for one hour or so.

Roll the dough out about 1cm thick. Originally, these cookies are cut out with a moon-shaped cookie cutter, but I couldn’t find mine, so for my first batch I used a rectangular cutter. The dough is sticky and quite tricky to cut, so for the second batch I rolled the dough out into a square and used a sharp knife to cut out small rectangles.

Dry your Zedernbrot in a preheated oven (150 C) for about 20 minutes, or until their surface isn’t sticky to touch anymore. While the cookies are in the oven, you can prepare the icing: add as much lemon juice in the powder sugar as you need in order to get a mixture that is easy to stir with a spoon. Let the cookies cool a bit, then spread some icing on top of each, using a small spoon. I wanted mine extra lemony, so I squeezed a couple of lemon juice drops on each cookie before spreading the icing. Let the cookies dry, then store them.

P.S. So, two more days to go! If I don’t change my mind in the last minute, there’s going to be still something fruity and something chocolatey on the list ;)

Kaffeemakronen - Coffee Macaroons

A friend of mine was asking for me to bake hazelnut macaroons, which are a must in any self-respecting Plätzchen assortment, but I was craving for something with coffee. That’s how I came up with this recipe that combines both wishes -  and it worked! There’s not enough coffee to my taste, but then again, will there ever be? ;)

German macaroons are very easy to do compared with their French counterparts. Just beat the egg whites, add the rest, and bake. Most recipes tell you to wait a couple of hours before baking them, but today I didn’t have the time for that, and they turned out good even so.

For about 28 macaroons you need:

• 2 egg whites


• a pinch of salt


• 85g sugar


• 145g ground hazelnuts


• 30g all-purpose flour


• 3 tsp instant coffee - make it as strong as you can!


• 2 Tbsp molasses


• 28 chocolate covered coffee beans

First make the coffee: dilute as much instant coffee as you can in about 2 Tbsp hot water. Note that you'll only need part of this - the rest you can drink, provided you add  a lot of sugar ;) (This is how I did it, maybe there would be better methods.)

Beat the egg whites together with the salt until they form soft peaks. Then add gradually the sugar and continue beating until shiny and firm again. Then add hazelnuts, flour, and 3 tsp of that strong instant coffee you made. Stir with a wooden spoon until all ingredients are well combined.

Now, drop batter by teaspoonfuls on an oven tray covered with a parchment paper. It’s best to use two spoons - in one, you have the batter, and with the other one, you help the batter to land on the oven tray.

Bake your macaroons in a preheated oven (160 C) for about 20 minutes, or until they are not sticky anymore form the outside but still soft from the inside. Glue one coffee bean on top of each macaroon, using molasses as glue.

Crunchy Caramel Hearts with Cashews

Caramel and salt is a match made in heaven. These crunchy cookies topped with salty cashew caramel are so far the favourites of two test persons- and I don't blame them! The recipe comes from a little book called Weihnachtsplätzchen, and the only thing I changed was the amount of caramel - I made a bit more for the cook to be able to savour some of it as well ;)

For about 35 hearts you need

Caramel:

• 90g sugar


• 55g cashews


• salt to taste

Cookies:

• 180g flour


• a pinch of salt


• 2 Tbsp sugar


• 16g vanilla sugar


• 120g butter or margarine


• 50ml (vegan) cream


• a bit of milk for brushing

First, make the caramel: in a pan, heat the sugar until it melts and gets light brown - but be careful! Caramel burns very easily. Then add the cashews, turn a couple of times with a spatula to make sure all cashews are coated with caramel, and take away from heat. Pour the caramel onto a surface covered with parchment paper and let cool.

In the meantime, prepare the dough: in a baking bowl, combine flour, salt, sugar, and vanilla sugar. Add butter (cut in small cubes) and work with your fingertips until fine and crumbly. Then add cream and form the dough into a ball. Place the dough in the fridge for 10 minutes or so.

Now, it’s time to cut the caramel. I used a sharp knife to cut it into small pieces, but you could also use your food processor. Add salt to your taste and stir well.

Take your dough out of the fridge, roll it out to about 3mm thin, and take out heart formed cookies with a cookie cutter. Place them on an oven pan covered with a parchment paper. Brush each cookie with a bit of milk and sprinkle caramel on top.

Bake in a preheated oven (190 C) for about 12 minutes, or when the cookies are golden brown. Let cool on a rack - and enjoy!

Kathrinchen - the Gingerbread That Opens the Christmas Season

So a Roman emperor asks you to marry him, and your answer is “No, thanks.” Better think twice! Catherine of Alexandria turned down a marriage proposal coming from the emperor Maxentius in year 305, and guess what happened? Maxentius tried to kill Catherine using a breaking wheel (hence the wheel in this picture) - but didn’t succeed and had her beheaded instead.

In memory of that event the Germans traditionally start their Plätzchen season on the 24th of November, on the eve of St. Catherine’s day, and bake a special form of Lebkuchen, or gingerbread, called Kathrinchen. I only found about this tradition today, but next year I’m definitely going to serve these lemon-scented gingerbread cookies on that day. And bake them a couple of days in advance: these cookies need 4-5 days to get softer and to better reveal their nice lemony taste.

This recipe is again from Feinste Weinachtsbäckerei. I don’t have a proper Kathrinchen cookie cutter, so I used another rectangular cookie cutter, about 4cm wide and 6cm long.

For about 40 of  cookies that size you need:

• 100g honey


• 50g sugar


• 25g butter


• 1 egg yolk


• 30g sugar


• 2 tsp gingerbread spice mixture


• zest of one lemon


• 1 Tbsp rose water


• 1 tsp potash


• 250g all-purpose flour (I baked mine with spelt 1050)


• 1 pinch of salt

Plus for the icing:

• 4 Tbsp sugar


• 2 Tbsp hot water


• 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Place honey, 50g sugar, and butter in a pan and heat until sugar has melted. Mix egg yolk, 30g sugar, spices, and lemon zest together in a baking bowl. Mix potash with rose water and add to the egg-sugar mixture. Now add honey mixture and flour (I added a pinch of salt in the flour, although it wasn’t in the original recipe) and stir with a wooden spoon until all ingredients are well combined. Place the dough in the fridge for one hour or so.

Roll out the dough 0,5cm thick and cut it into rectangular cookies either with a knife or with a cookie cutter. Bake about 15 minutes in a preheated oven (180 C).

Once the cookies have cooled a bit, brush them with lemon-sugar icing (just mix all ingredients together). This makes the cookies sprinkle like they had a bit frost on them!

Coconut Balls with Almonds and White Chocolate

My advice is - do NOT try out this recipe. I did, and there’s no turning back. These crunchy almond coconut cookies dipped in white chocolate and rolled in coconut flakes are highly addictive.

The recipe is from a small booked called Weinachtsplätzchen, and had to be somewhat modified - I had to add a bit of water in the dough, and the amount of white chocolate (100g) just wasn’t enough. That’s why half of my cookies are covered with dark chocolate (which didn’t work as well as white chocolate, though). You can also leave the coating out - the cookies taste great even without it.

For some 35 cookies you need:

• 300g all-purpose flour


• 100g ground almonds


• 100g desiccated coconut


• a pinch of salt


• 100g sugar


• 250g butter or vegan margarine


• about 50ml water

For the coating:

• 200g (vegan) white chocolate


• 100g desiccated coconut

In a baking bowl, combine together flour, almonds, coconut, salt, and sugar. Add butter or margarine in small cubes and work with your fingertips until fine and crumbly. Add enough water so that you can form the dough into a ball.

Divide the dough into about 35 pieces. Roll each piece into a small ball. Bake in a preheated oven (180 C) about 15-20 minutes, or until cooked but not brown yet. (Lower the temperature if needed.)

Once the cookies are baked and cooled a bit, melt the white chocolate - add some (vegan) cream if needed. I’m too lazy to use a bain-marie, so I melted mine in a pan - it worked, too, but I needed to add a bit of milk. Drop a couple of cookies at a time into the chocolate, take out with a spoon and roll in the desiccated coconut. Let dry on a plate and transfer into an air-tight container.

I’m going to bake a second portion of these cookies and coat them only just before Christmas. My guess is, even well-hidden, they won’t keep as well as other Plätzchen types.

Spitzbuben

“Quite good, but not as good as the ones my mother-in-law bakes”, was the honest judgment of a friend of mine when she tasted my Spitzbuben (= rascals), these little sandwich cookies that are amongst the most popular Christmas cookies in Germany. And she was right. The recipe I found in Feinste Weinachtsbäckerei results in very decent Spitzbuben - but not the best I've eaten.

While I’m waiting for my friend to convince her mother-in-law to reveal her secret recipe, I’ll share this one with you. Spitzbuben are not difficult to make, but you need to count with at least 2 hours to get 40 cookies. I was lucky today to have some baking company, so it went faster - and was a lot more fun!

For 40 or so you need

• 125 g butter or margarine


• 100g sugar


• 8g vanilla sugar


• 1 pinch of salt


• 1 Tbsp rum


• 1 egg


• 60g ground almonds


• 250g all-purpose flour


• plus some jam (raspberry, apricot..) and powder sugar to decorate

Beat butter, vanilla sugar, and sugar together until pale yellow and fluffy, then add the egg and rum and mix well. In a bowl, combine almonds, flour, and salt together, and pour the mixture on the butter mixture. Use your hands to combine all ingredients well together. Form the dough into a ball and place in the fridge for an hour or so (or even overnight).

Roll the dough out about 0,5 cm thin. Cut out stars (or circles) with a cookie cutter. In half of the cookies, make a hole in the middle (I used an apple corer). Bake your cookies in a preheated oven (180 C) for about 10 minutes, or until cooked but not brown yet. Set aside to cool and bake the rest of the cookies.

Spread about ½ espresso spoon of jam on top of each hole-less cookie and place a cut-out cookie on top. Place on a plate. When all your sandwich cookies are done, sprinkle some (vanilla-flavoured) powder sugar on top.

Zimtsterne or Cinnamon Stars

At this time of the year, thousands of Germans are attending baking lessons to find about the best method for baking better Zimtsterne as their neighbours do. Newspaper articles are written about what is the safe daily amount for kids to eat of these cinnamon stars. To put it short: Zimtsterne are THE German Christmas cookies. And luckily, if you have a good recipe, they are actually not that hard to make!

I was lucky to find the perfect recipe right in the beginning. It’s from a small book called Lieblings-Winachtsplätzchen. Making Zimtsterne takes some time - for my 40 stars or so I spent 90 minutes in the kitchen - and you need to be practically glued to your oven to make sure your precious little stars don’t overcook. But like I said, it’s not difficult.

For about 40 little stars you need:

• 400g ground almonds


• 3 tsp cinnamon (I use only Ceylon cinnamon these days, not the Cassia variety)


• 1 pinch of salt


• 16g vanilla sugar


• 2 egg whites


• 100g powder sugar

And for the meringue topping:

• 1 egg white


• 100g powder sugar


• 1 Tbsp lemon juice

In a bowl, combine almond, cinnamon, vanilla sugar, and salt. In a baking bowl, beat egg whites until they form soft peaks, then gradually add powder sugar and continue beating until firm again. Add almond mixture to the egg white mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until all ingredients all well combined.

Take this wet dough in your hands, form it into a ball, and place between two layers of cling film. Roll it out (still between the cling film) about 1cm thick. Remove the upper layer of cling film and cut out small stars using a cookie cutter. (The dough is sticky, so you might need to dip the cutter in some powder sugar.)

Now comes the hardest part: on each star, you should spread an even layer of meringue topping (beat the egg white until soft peaks form, add gradually sugar and lemon juice and beat until very firm again) - with a brush, it said in my recipe. My baking brush is quite big and it just didn’t work with these small stars, so I used an espresso spoon. I took one star at a time in my left hand and used my right hand to place a half of an espresso spoon of the topping in the middle, then spread it to each point.

Bake your stars in a preheated oven (150 C) for about 10-15 minutes. Don’t let them get any colour! If they are still a bit wet but you fear they’ll gain colour, reduce the temperature and let them dry just a bit longer.

After they have cooled, place your cinnamon stars in an airtight container.

And what is the amount of Zimtsterne that kids can safely eat per day? Well, if you’re using Ceylon cinnamon, you don’t have to worry. But if you prefer Cassia cinnamon, kids should not eat more than three of your stars a day - the coumarin it contains causes liver damage (!) in bigger amounts.

Hallongrottor - vanilla cookies with raspberry

How cool is this: I’ve been baking small vanilla-raspberry cookies out of my favourite Swedish baking book, Underbart ät gott, for more than two years now, and only today did I find out that they are also German Plätzchen called Husarenkrapferl! In our family they will still be called hallongrottor, though.

Hallongrottor are very easy to bake, but there’s one challenge regarding the ingredients. According to the recipe, you need 60g of marsánpulver. Now if you live anywhere else than in Sweden you probably don’t have a clue what that is or how to get it. I’ve got my own Swedish provider (than you, Erik!) so I’ve been too lazy to find out how to replace it. Marsánpulver is a powder consisting of cornstarch and vanilla aroma, so I guess you could replace it by cornstarch and vanilla sugar. Then again, Sweden is really worth visiting - maybe this would be a perfect excuse ;)

For 25 hallongrottor/Husarenkrapferl you need

• 225g butter or vegan margarine


• 85g sugar


• 250g all-purpose flour


• 60g marsánpulver


• 1 ⅕ tsp baking powder


• 1 pinch of salt (if using non-salt butter)


• raspberry jam

Preheat your oven to 180 C. Cut the butter into small cubes and place in a baking bowl. In another bowl, combine sugar, flour, marsánpulver, baking powder, and salt (if using). Work the mixture with your fingertips until fine and crumbly, then form into a ball. If necessary, add 1 Tbsp cold water.

Divide the dough into 25 parts. Roll each of them into a small ball and place on an oven tray covered with parchment paper. Press a hole in the middle of each cookie, using your finger, and fill the holes with raspberry jam. Bake about 12-15 minutes, or until well cooked but not brown yet.

Lemon Madeleines

Now that I took my Madeleine form out to bake Bärentatzen, it’s also time to bake lemon Madeleines! They might not be a traditional Christmas thing, but they mix well into an assortment of Plätzchen. Ever since I read the famous passage of Proust’s "In Search of Lost Time" (and successfully faked in an exam having read the rest of it, too) I wanted to taste these small lemon-scented delicacies - and was rewarded when I finally got to taste them. Maybe it’s because these were the first I tasted, maybe not, but these particular ones taste to me better than any other ones! The recipe is from Professional Baking, and I’ve just adjusted the amount of lemon in them - up.

For about 28 small madeleines you’ll need

• 60 g egg yolks


• 10g demerera sugar


• 15g honey


• 8g grated lemon zest


• 60g egg whites


• 75g sugar


• 1g salt


• 3g baking powder


• 90g all-purpose flour


• 90g melted butter

In a bowl, mix together yolks, demerera sugar, honey, and lemon zest. In another bowl, combine dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder). In a third bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then add sugar while continuing to beat, and then beat until a firm meringue. In the yolk mixture, fold alternately the meringue and flour mixture. Finish by folding the melted butter. Chill the batter for at least 20 minutes in the fridge (or on a cold balcony). This is very important - if you bake the madeleines right away, they don’t gain the desired consistency (been there, done that ;) ).

Preheat your oven to 180 C. Butter your Madeleine pan(s) and using two teaspoons, place about 1 - 1,5 tsp batter into each hole. Bake 6-7 minutes or until golden brown. Now it gets exciting - will your Madeleines develop the famous “bosse” or not? One tip I heard is that the batter should be really cold and the oven set to 240 degrees in the beginning for an optimal “bosse” result. I tried that, and for one batch it did work! For the other ones it didn’t, though.

Remove Madeleines from the pan and bake the next batch as soon as the pan has cooled so much you can butter it.

Store Madeleines in an airtight container.

Bärentatzen, "bear paws"

A German friend of mine specifically asked me to bake Bärentatzen, or bear paws, since her mother doesn't normally bake them. Well, I don't blame her. If you follow the traditional recipe and buy the equipment needed, it's very time-consuming and expensive. But if you take some shortcuts, I do recommend you try baking these marshmallow-like chocolate cookies. They are irresistible!

Greek Christmas Cookies with Orange and Honey

I love cookbooks where every single recipe works. Recipes from My Greek Kitchen written by Rena Salaman is one of those rare books: you choose any recipe and can be sure that the result is perfect. After a Vanillekipferl disaster from the previous days, this was the book I needed now. I chose these traditional Greek Christmas cookies flavoured with orange, honey, cinnamon, and brandy - a heavenly combination!

These cookies are made without eggs and butter, so apart from honey, they’re vegan. For a 100% vegan result, either leave the last step out (they taste great even without), or make a syrup using agave syrup instead.

I made one small change to the recipe, though: instead of walnuts, I used pecans. Walnuts tend to get rancid very easily, whereas pecans keep better, so I rarely buy walnuts.

For about 35 cookies you need:

• 150 ml olive oil


• 95g sugar


• 1 orange - juice and grated zest


• ½ tsp baking soda


• 350g flour (I used spelt 630 this time)


• 1 tsp baking powder


• pinch of salt


• ½ tsp cinnamon


• 4 Tbsp brandy

And for the syrup:

• 150ml water


• 100g sugar


• 250g honey


• 1 tsp cinnamon

• plus some walnuts or pecan nuts, chopped coarsely

Mix olive oil with sugar. Add zest, brandy and baking soda to the juice (it will foam a bit, that’s normal). In a baking bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, then add oil-sugar mixture and juice mixture. Mix the dough with a wooden spoon until it’s smooth. Then form small balls (mine were 20g or so) with your hands and place them on an oven tray covered with parchment paper. Press them down gently with a fork and bake about 15 minutes in a preheated oven (180 C), or until pale brown.

When your cookies come out of the oven, it’s time to prepare the syrup: combine water, sugar, cinnamon, and honey in a pan and bring to a boil. Let simmer over a low heat for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Drop a couple of cookies at a time in the syrup (my pan fit 8 or so at a time), let them simmer for 1-2 minutes and then remove with a skimmer onto a plate. Top with crushed nuts while the cookies are still sticky!

These cookies are quite sweet, so they taste great with a strong espresso.

Vanillekipferl - the Recipe That Worked

As the title suggests, I had some problems finding a good recipe for little vanilla crescents - to the extent that I was about to declare the word Vanillekipferl as my new least favourite German word (the current one being Mittelohrentzündung). These originally Austrian delicacies look very innocent, but it’s very hard to find a balance between a tasty one and one that is possible to bake. Either they’re too dry and tasteless, or they spread too much in the oven (like in the picture below), or they won’t hold together after baking and crumble all over.

With my fourth try I finally managed to bake the perfect ones and I’m happy to share this recipe with you. Note that most recipes use ground almonds instead of hazelnuts - to my taste, the ones with hazelnut have much more flavour! But if you want, you can replace the hazelnuts with ground almonds.

For about 40 crescents you need

• 200 flour (I used 100g whole-grain spelt, 100g all-purpose flour)


• 100g hazelnuts, ground


• 1 pinch of salt


• 80g sugar


• 8g vanilla sugar


• 100g butter or margarine (I used a mixture of both)


• 1 egg (small/medium)


• plus some vanilla flavoured powder sugar for dusting (I just mixed together powder sugar and vanilla sugar, but the best result you get if you split a vanilla bean, place it in a glass jar with sugar and let stand 24 hours or so)

In a baking bowl, combine flour, hazelnuts, salt, sugar, and vanilla sugar. Cut the butter into small cubes and add to the flour mixture. Work with your fingertips until fine and crumbly, then add egg and work the dough until it forms a ball (if not, add a tiny bit a water until it does).

Now most recipes tell you to let the dough rest for one hour, two hours, or even overnight, but I didn’t feel it made any difference whatsoever. So just form tiny crescents (mine were about 12g each) with your hands - this is actually the hardest part! Place the cookies on an oven tray covered with a parchment paper.

Bake in a preheated oven (180 C) 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are pale brown. Let the crescents cool 2-3 minutes, then transfer on a plate, using a spatula. Dust generously with vanilla-scented powder sugar.

I’m intrigued to see how well these keep. Hopefully very well: I’ve got hundreds of them - most of those from batches that look horrible but taste delicious :)

Rosinenhäufchen mit Rum

So finally I’m trying out an authentic German Plätzchen recipe! These are very easy and quick to do - and taste heavenly! They are my son’s favourite cookies - and in case you wonder, kids can eat them safely, because the rum is first cooked and then still baked so no alcohol left..

For about 25 cookies you need

• 100ml rum


• 100g raisins


• 100g sugar


• 100g butter or margarine


• 1 egg


• 200g all-purpose flour


• 1 pinch of salt


• ½ tsp baking powder

Preheat you oven to 180 C. Place rum and raisins in a pan, bring to a boil and let simmer 2-3 minutes or until most of the rum has been absorbed. Let cool. In the meantime, beat butter and sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Then add the egg and beat one minute more. Combine flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl and add to the sugar-butter-egg-mixture together with rum and raisins. Mix with a wooden spoon until all the ingredients are well combined.
With floured hands, form small balls (mine were about 25 g each) and place on an oven tray (covered with parchment paper). These cookies don’t grow much in the oven, so you don’t need to leave a lot of room between. Bake 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool - and hide well! Or eat right away with your favourite warm drink.

Finnish Gingerbread Cookies

When I was a kid I knew Christmas was upon us when I smelled the gingerbread cookies. That smell is Christmas for me.

My challenge this year was to get all of the ingredients here in Germany - to find out what they are called in German and to get them from the supermarket. There’s one ingredient I couldn’t find - bitter orange peel powder. So I used sweet orange peels instead, dried in the oven overnight and then ground as fine as possible. The effect is not exactly the same - not worse, but just different. Germans have their own version of gingerbread: they call them Lebkuchen. The main difference is that they're made with honey instead of molasses and the spices used are slightly different. I'm obviously very biased, so you might guess which ones I prefer.

This is what you need (it’s impossible to say how many you’ll get, it depends on the size of the cookie cutters you’re using - but one portion gives you one big plate full of them):

• 50ml molasses


• 125g butter (margarine for vegan cookies)


• 90g sugar


• 0,5 tsp cinnamon, ground ginger, cloves, bitter orange peel, each


• 0,2 tsp cardamom and allspice, each


• 1 egg (replace with 100g sour soy cream / some other vegan cream)


• 500ml flour (more or less 300g) - I baked mine this year with whole-grain spelt instead of all-purpose wheat flour, and it worked!


• 0,3 tsp salt


• 1 tsp baking soda

Place butter, sugar, molasses, and the spices in a pan. Warm until the butter has melted, then let cool to room temperature. In the meantime, measure the flour, salt, and baking soda in a baking bowl. When the butter-spice-mixture is cool enough, beat it until pale brown, add the egg, and beat one minute more. (I do this using a twirl whisk.)

Pour the mixture into the flour mixture and stir well. Note that the dough is quite soft at this point, but do NOT add more flour. Now, place the dough in the fridge for a couple of hours, or preferably overnight. This will allow for the flavours to develop to their full potential!

When your dough is ready, roll it out on a flour dusted work surface until about 2-3 mm thin. Cut out cookies, using cookie cutters of different shapes. Place your cookies on an oven tray covered with parchment paper.  Bake in a preheated oven (200 C) 6-8 minutes. Note that size matters here: on each tray, place cookies of more or less the same size - otherwise the small ones will burn before the big ones are done.

Out of experience I can already say that gingerbread cookies keep very well several weeks, as long as you store them in an airtight container.

Gingerbread cookies also taste delicious with blue cheese and Port wine..

P.S. Today I happened to find this spice mixture from Herbaria. It's called Ginger&Bread and it has all of the spices you need for gingerbread - I'll try it out for the next batch and tell if it works!

Biscotti di Nonna

These are the best cookies ever. And I’m not exaggerating. Even the dough is addictive! I got the recipe from a cousin of mine about four years ago, and have been baking them ever since. (Originally the recipe is from the Gourmet Magazine.) I bake them all year round. But during the Christmas time they are very practical: even one single portion yields about 50 (more if you make them Plätzchen-sized - very small, that is) - just pack a dozen or two in a nice tin box and you have a perfect gift.

As the name suggest, these cookies are baked twice (biscoctus - baked twice): first you make long loaves, bake them, cut them into slices, and bake once more.

Biscotti are said to keep for centuries (!) so I guess it’s safe to assume they’ll make it until the 24th - if you manage to hide them well, that is.

For about 50 biscotti you’ll need

• 200g almonds, toasted and roughly chopped


• 1 cup sugar (or 215g)


• 2 ¾ cups flour (or 375g, using spelt flour type 630)


• 1,5 tsp baking powder


• 1 pinch of salt


• 8g vanilla sugar


• 3 eggs


• 115g melted butter or margarine


• 50ml Cointreau or other liquor of your liking

Place all dry ingredients in a baking bowl. Then add butter, liquor, and the eggs, and with a wooden spoon, work the dough until the ingredients are well combined. Place the bowl in the fridge (or on a cold balcony, if you have one) and let stand 30 minutes. In the meantime, preheat your oven to 200C. Then form two long loaves, using WET hands, and bake until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes. Let cool and cut into slices, a bit less than 1 cm thick. Place the slices on an oven pan and bake again until your biscotti are evenly cooked, about 10-15 minutes. Be careful, this time they burn easily!

Biscotti taste wonderful with coffee at any time of the day, or with a strong wine like Port or Marsala. Store in an airtight container.