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.