German Lebkuchen

Mmmh, Lebkuchen!
I am not sure how many variations of Lebkuchen there is but the mix of spices is key.
This recipe is great as it makes a large batch and is easy as you don't have to roll or
form by hand.

 

Ingredients

70 g dark chocolate melts
20 g butter, softened
200 g icing sugar, sifted
2 eggs
70 g ground hazelnuts
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons rum or apple juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon mixed spice
250 g plain flour 

For the icing

180 g icing sugar, sifted
6 EL orange juice or water
125 g glace or candied ginger

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
For the dough, melt chocolate in a water bath, set aside. In a a stand mixer beat butter and icing sugar until pale and creamy. Add all other ingredients and mix until combined. Spread dough into a Swiss roll tin (30x 24cm), smooth top.

Bake in pre-heated oven for 20-30 minutes or until a skewer inseretd into the centre comes 

out clean.

Cool the gingerbread cake in the tin. In the meantime mix together icing sugar and orange juice. Spread icing evenly over cake. Chop glace ginger and sprinkle over the icing. Let set before cutting into squares.

German coconut maceroons

So here is one of our recipes from the magazine…. enjoy baking the light and fluffy coconut macaroons with chocolate base.

Ingredients
3 eggwhites, at room temperature
330 g caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
170 g desiccated coconut
Zest of 1 lemon
150 g dark chocolate, melted
Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Place the eggwhites in a bowl and use an electric mixer to beat until soft peaks form. Add the sugar in batches, beating continually, until the mixture becomes stiff and glossy. Add vanilla extract and fold through with a spatula. Add the lemon zest and coconut, in batches, and gently fold through with a spatula until evenly distributed, being careful not to overwork the mixture.
Spoon 2 teaspoonful of batter on a baking tray lined with greased baking paper. Bake in the oven for 10–12 minutes, or until the macaroons are lightly browned.
Gently remove from the baking paper immediately and cool on wire racks. Once cooled dip macaroons in melted chooclate and let set on a wire rack.

Swiss chocolate cookies - Brunsli

 Brunsli (Swiss chocolate cookies)

Only a few sleeps left til Christmas… enough time to bake another batch of cookies… so why not try Brunsli? One of the most popular Swiss Christmas cookies and absolutely delicious with coffee, tea or even a glass of wine.

Ingredients
250 g sugar
250 g ground almonds
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp plain flour
2 egg whites
Pinch of salt
100 g dark chocolate, chopped

Method
Place the sugar, ground almonds, cinnamon and flour in a bowl and mix well.
Use an electric mixer to whisk egg whites and salt until soft peaks form. Gently fold in the sugar-almond mixture with a spatula until just combined. Don’t overwork.
Melt chocolate in a warm water bath and fold gently through the sugar-almond mixture. Form the dough into a ball, cover and let cool at room temparature for about 1 hour.
Dust the work bench with sugar and roll the cookie dough with a rolling pin to about 5mm thickness. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters and place on a lined baking tray.
Let the cookies dry at room temperature for a few hours (best over night). Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees Celsius and bake cookies for 5 min. Remove from baking tray and place on a wire rack to cool.

Happy Holidays

While Christmas bells are chiming, oh, may there come to you
A dear little fairy, who's always good and true;
The little happy fairy, who drives away dull care,
And makes all things upon the earth seem ever bright and fair.
She'll whisper to good Santa to bring what you most wish;
So if you have been longing for a fine pudding dish,
She will not, as in by-gone years, forget and bring to you
Something that you do not want, though beautiful and new.
By Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr.

And a German poem I grew up with:
Markt und Straßen stehn verlassen,
Still erleuchtet jedes Haus,
Sinnend geh' ich durch die Gassen,
Alles sieht so festlich aus.

An den Fenstern haben Frauen
Buntes Spielzeug fromm geschmückt,
Tausend Kindlein stehn und schauen,
Sind so wunderstill beglückt.

Und ich wandre aus den Mauern
Bis hinaus in's freie Feld,
Hehres Glänzen, heil'ges Schauern!

Wie so weit und still die Welt!
Sterne hoch die Kreise schlingen,
Aus des Schneees Einsamkeit
Steigt 's wie wunderbares Singen -
O du gnadenreiche Zeit!
By Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

 

See the our Christmas ebook at ISSUU.

Merry Christmas with s'more

Icy cold air, snowflakes and twinkling candles on a Christmas tree. The smell of mandarines, peanuts and cinnamon in the air.
Mum or grandma baking Christmas cookies in the kitchen… These are all typical Swiss and/or German Christmas childhood memories.

Living in Australia, where we have a BBQ for Christmas and go to the beach, bringing back some of those memories inspired us to our new magazine for Christmas. So if you want to know what a Brunsli, Mailänderli or a Lebkuchen is, then look no further and get baking.

To keep you going whilst you are baking or just in case you get really hungry, there is a hearty Baked Beans recipe.
And just in case you are searching for gift ideas, why not give some beautifully wrapped home made cookies or if you would like to venture further, have a look at Juliana’s craft project.

Christmas is in the air

A while ago we went up to the Blue Mountains to a friends place for some "Plaetzchen backen", making cookies. The kids had so much fun and we snapped happily away as we thought we would use it for our s'more Christmas mag. Here are a few that we didn't find space for in our little
cookbook.

And that was the end of the photo shoot.

German Lebkuchen cookies - November Daring Bakers Challenge

Holiday season is the time for sharing and Peta of Peta Eats is sharing a dozen cookies, some classics and some of her own, from all over the world with us.

Oh, Peta gave us so many choices but I knew I had to make the German Lebkuchen (gingerbread) cookies. Lebkuchen is the ultimate Christmas memory to me and this recipe is beautiful soft and moist yet firm enough to cut out any shape you like. Perfect for Christmas baking with family and friends.

In Germany it's a beloved tradition to have friends over for some cookie baking (Plaetzchen) to devour them on the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve. Also important is the table decoration consisting of a wreath with four candles marking the four Advent Sundays. On the first Sunday you'll light only one candle and then the second on the second Advent and so fourth.

It's such a nice welcoming of Christmas that I miss very much here in Sydney. I still have candles on the table but since it's summer it doesn't quite feel the same to me.

Anyway, baking is still fun even in summer and these gingerbread cookies are very scrumptious. 

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Ingredients:
85ml honey
115g dark brown sugar
30g butter
225g plain flour, sifted
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 egg, beaten
50g ground almonds
Icing
25g icing sugar sifted
2 tsp water 


Method

In a large pan place the honey, sugar and butter. Put on a low heat until the butter and sugar have melted.  Remove from the heat. Sift together the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda. Beat the egg in a small dish. Add one half of the flour mixture and half of the egg to the pan and mix well. Repeat with the remaining flour and egg. Finally add in the ground almonds and mix till thoroughly combined. The dough now needs to be chilled, it is very sticky and will seem along way away from being a biscuit dough but don’t worry.

Place it in a plastic bag, an easy way of doing this is to fold a bag over the inside of a large jug and tip the dough in.
Chill overnight in the fridge, in fact you can leave this dough to develop it’s flavours in the fridge for up to three days.

Roll dough out between two sheets of greaseproof paper to approx 5mm thick. Preheat the oven to 160c Fan/180c/Gas Mark 4. Cut out shapes and lay them on a lined baking tray.

Bake in the oven for 7-9 minutes until golden brown.  Allow to cool for five minutes on the tray to firm up a little before carefully transferring to a cooling rack.

Mix up a runny icing glaze combining your sifted icing sugar with the water. Line up the lebkuchen on a wire rack. Using a pastry brush glaze the tops of the biscuits by brushing on a thin layer of icing.  Apply a second coat and leave to dry. The biscuits will keep for up to three weeks in an airtight container – that’s if you can resist eating them.

Schneeflocken Cookies

I found a very fast and easy to make cookie recipe which is called snowflakes because you dust it with a lot of icing sugar. It's very light and crumbly and buttery and sweet...mmmh! I have added a bit of anise seed because I like it so much and it's yummy with the buttery taste.
It's a bit of an old fashioned German recipe and it goes very well with a nice cup of tea not only for Christmas. In fact it could be the kind of biscuit served at an East Frisian tea ceremony.
It's a region in North Germany where tea drinking is a very important part of socialising or just to unwind. Traditionally you'll put a kandis-sugar ("Kluntje" or rock candy) in the tea cup first, then pour in the tea and then add a little cream so it looks like a little cloud floating on top. You are not suppose to stir the tea and drink the cream first, then the tea and the last bit would be the very sweet tea with the dissolved kandis-sugar. I usually skip the cream and also stir my tea as I like the crackling sound the rock-candy makes in the hot tea. Either way it's a beautiful tradition and it is still practiced in East Frisian.

 Recipe:

125 g butter, softened
100 g caster sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
1 egg white
100 g cornflour
100 g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon anise seed, crushed in a mortar and pestle
icing sugar, to dust

1. Line baking trays with baking paper. Whisk butter and both sugars with an electric mixer until pale and creamy.
2. Add egg white and whisk again. Mix cornflour, plain flour, baking powder and anise seed and add, one tablespoon at a time to the butter-sugar mix. Whisk until combined.
3. Tip out and roll dough, on a lightly floured surface, into a roll about 5 cm in diameter. Wrap in cling wrap and chill for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
4. Unwrap and cut into 0.5 cm slices, lay on a baking tray, leave a little room between each, and bake in oven for 10-12 minutes. They should only be lightly brown around the edge.
5. Cool on tray completely then dust liberally with sieved icing sugar.

Lebkuchenwuerfel

Today I made gingerbread slices to give them as teacher's present for Christmas. They are really yummy and the hundreds and thousands make them quite playful which I thought kind of fits nicely for a pre school. You can of course also ganache them with dark chocolate which also works well.
Happy 3rd Advent to everyone!

For this typical German Lebkuchen (gingerbread) you'll need a spice mix that will give those slices their authentic taste. In Germany, around Christmas time you'll be able to buy ready made spice mixes for all sorts of different Lebkuchen and Pfefferkuchen but you might not get it in Australia. However it's easily mixed together with spices available here and I'll give you a link to a recipe for Lebkuchengewuerz.

Recipe:
100 g dark chocolate, melted
200 g butter, melted
200 g brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons red wine
100 g ground hazelnuts
200 g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons gingerbread spices*(see note)

Icing:
200 g pure icing sugar
6-8 tablespoons orange juice
 hundreds and thousands to sprinkle

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2.  Whisk together chocolate, butter, brown sugar and eggs.
3. Combine hazelnuts, flour, baking powder and spices and fold through the chocolate-butter mixture.
4. Line a deep baking tray (34x24 cm) with baking paper and spread dough evenly in tray.
5. Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until a skewer pokes in the centre comes out clean. Let cool.
6. Make icing and spread over slice then sprinkle with hundreds and thousands and let set.
7. Cut into squares.

*note;  "Lebkuchengewuerz" is called for in many German Christmas recipes.  It consist of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice, but also coriander and cardamom, which are not so common in in other spice mixes. If you do not have access to packets of "Lebkuchen Spice", you can make it at home, with this recipe.

Gingerbread house party

This past Sunday was the 3rd Advent and it rained and rained and rained. Quite unusual to have so much rain in Sydney at this time of the year but on the other hand the best weather for staying indoors and bake and make gingerbread houses. It's a beloved Christmas tradition in Germany to bake (well, if you're pressed for time you can buy them already made as a gingerbread house kit. I saw them at IKEA the other day.) and decorate the house with smaller Lebkuchen (gingerbread) and anything that you can think of. Years ago I bought a gingerbread house mould from Chefs Tool Box. The mould guarantees that all sides are even and makes assembling the house an easy task but you'll need a lot of royal icing to stick it all together. Don't make the icing too runny or it will take too long to set. I always stick sugar cubes inside the corners to make sure the walls are standing upright and prevent them from going lopsided. My daughter and her friends were adamant to decorate the houses themselves and the three of them got quickly very busy and sticky ;-). It was so much fun to watch them but I was also very much looking forward to a nice glass of wine in the evening. However, when the evening came the rain stopped, at least for a little while, and we got invited to join in to a pre-Christmas street fete. It was beautiful to share a merry moment with some lovely neighbours and everyone enjoyed themselves including the kids scooting up and down the pathway.

In Germany gingerbread (Lebkuchen) is made in two forms: a soft form used for cookies, slices and cake and a harder form, particularly associated with carnivals and street markets such as the Christmas markets (I really miss those markets) that occur in many German towns. The hard gingerbread is used for shapes, which are then further decorated with sweets and icing. The German-style Gingerbread is often used to build Lebkuchen Haeuser similar to the "witch's house" in the German fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. These houses are popular Christmas decorations everywhere in Germany and often built by children with the help of their parents.

This recipe makes one house and gives you a bit extra.

125 g brown sugar
a pinch salt
300 g treacle
1 tablespoon ground ginger
180 g butter, softened
500 g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
2. Beat sugar, salt and treacle, ginger and butter in a large mixer until combined and lighter in colour.
3. Add flour and bicarb soda and whisk until mixture forms a thick dough.
4. Place on lightly floured workbench and flatten with you hands. Press dough into mould.
5. Place mould on baking tray and bake for 20-30 minutes or until firm to touch (dough will crisp up once cooled).
6. Cool before removing from mould.


Use royal icing to assemble the house. I am sure your kids will love to help decorating the house with candies and Christmas cookies.

Easy as lemon-passionfruit curd

I am currently working in the Breville test kitchen and my colleague and test kitchen manager there, Naomi, brought in the latest copy of Janelle Bloom's My favourite food cookbook . I cannot go past a cookbook without at least trying one recipe and the microwave lemon curd in this one got me hooked.
At home, I realised I didn't have enough lemons to make a lemon curd so I mixed lemon and passion fruit juice for the curd. The method is so simple I will ever be thankful to Janelle for sharing it.

It's also a great last minute Christmas gift or as an Advent Mitbringsel (bring along gift). Just wrap the lid with a little linen, secure with a ribbon and add a nice gift tag - and off you go.

And here is my recipe for the lemon and passion fruit curd made in the microwave:

3 large eggs (please be kind and only buy free-range)
2 egg yolks
160 g caster sugar
rind of 1 lemon, finely grated (best to use a microplane)
100 ml lemon juice
60 ml fresh passion fruit juice, strained and seeds discarded (you'll need approx. 6-7 passion fruits)
125 g butter, diced

Whisk eggs, egg yolks, sugar and lemon rind in a large, heat-proof, microwave-safe bowl until combined. Whisk through lemon and passion fruit juice. Add the butter. Microwave, uncovered, for 7-10 minutes on Medium/50% whisking every minute until the mixture just comes to the boil and thickens. Pour into sterilised jars. Keep refrigerated.

You can use this curd for breakfast or as a filling for cookies or on top of a slice. It's always yummy!

Happy 1st Advent

Today is the first Advent and the start of a beloved Christmas tradition in Germany.
Advent are the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas, and to mark this passage of time, many Germans light a new candle on their Advent wreath every Advent Sunday.
Many families celebrate the Advent Sundays with singing Christmas carols, drinking hot spiced wine, and eating Christmas cookies or a piece of Stollen, a traditional German Christmas cake.
The Advent wreath was "invented" by Johann Hinrich Wichern, a German pastor, who founded an orphanage in Hamburg in 1833.  During the weeks leading up to Christmas, the children would ask him daily if Christmas had arrived. To make the wait easier, Wichern came up with his magical Christmas countdown, creating his first Advent wreath out of an old cartwheel and small candles.

Since living in Australia I need to mark this date in my calendar otherwise I would simply forget. It's 26 degrees Celsius outside and most of my friends are at the beach right now. Sounds weird for Christmas, doesn't it? Well, at least when you're from Europe.
Anyway, I  kicked off the Silly Season with some very traditional German Advent baking and my first batch of Plaetzchen (biscuits) are Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars).

I love Zimtsterne and you'll get them everywhere around this time in Germany.

And here is the recipe for true blue German Christmas cookies:

Zimsterne:

3 egg whites
250 g icing sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
1-2 teaspoons cinnamon
375 g ground almonds

1. Beat egg whites with an electric whisk until stiff peaks form. Fold through icing sugar, tablespoon after tablespoon until soft and glossy. Take aside 3 tablespoons of the meringue for later.
2. Add vanilla sugar, cinnamon and almonds and mix through until it all comes together and isn't sticky anymore.
3. Roll dough between two layers of baking paper with a rolling pin to 1cm thick. Rest in refrigerator for about 2 hours.
4. Preheat oven to 125 degree Celsius. Cut out stars using a cookie cutter and put on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Press cookie cutter in extra icing sugar if the dough sticks to the cutter.
5. Brush stars (or use a wooden skewer if you don't have a small brush) with meringue and bake for 15 min. Decrease oven temperature to 100 degree Celsius and bake for another 10-15 min. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.
6. Repeat with dough until all is used.

Light 1 candle (1st Advent) and enjoy with tea or mulled wine (Gluehwein).