Spice Cookies – Page 3 – Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World

CINNAMON STARS (“ZIMTSTERNE”) – Strange, wonderful, & familiar all at once

Cinnamon Stars, complete with a hole for hanging them off your tree.

This is the cookie we point to when people ask for an example of what we mean by a “heritage” cookie. There aren’t many Americans who are familiar with Zimtsterne (zimt = cinnamon, sterne = stars), but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in a German speaking country who does not know them. Or in a country that borders on one of those nations. They are as common and ubiquitous in that part of the world as Chocolate Chip Cookies in the U.S.

The fact that people need to learn about them is one part of the “strange”. The other lies in how the cookies are made.

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe.

If you’re reading this, we assume that you’re a baker. Have you ever seen, anywhere, a cookie where you bake on the icing? It’s brilliant!

At their core, Cinnamon Stars are nothing more than a very refined version of a dense macaroon. You grind up nuts (in this case using a mixture for added complexity), flavor those nuts (in this case with spices for yet more complexity), mix that with a French meringue (egg whites whipped with superfine or powdered sugar), and then bake (in this case using a very low oven for color and texture. Change the type of meringue with a higher percentage of whites, and you’ll end up with a flavored Macaron. Change the spices to metric ton of almond extract with an average 350 F (175 C) baking temperature, and you’ll have Amaretti. Make that a bit of citrus with almond meal instead of flour, and you’ll get the antique Renaissance versions like Sienese Ricciarelli or Spanish Almendrados.

It’s a simple concept. But… whoever heard of rolling out your macaroon dough before baking? Or baking on the icing?

It works because the icing is just that same French meringue mixed with added lemon juice. Meringue bakes well. Obviously. And that lemon juice works wonders, because being in the icing preserves all the high notes. That is one of the tricks we learned along the way. Lemon zest works great inside a cookie because the zest holds all the essential oils (the perfume of the fruit). But the tang of the lemon juice will disappear. If you want to catch those sharp, acidic notes you need to put them into an icing.

That covers “strange.” Wonderful comes from the overall flavor, and a Northern European tradition we’ve adopted for years: the Tree Of Gifts.

**Moravian Snowflakes, Polish Gingerbread (Pierniczki), a chocolate angel (on the bottom), and a Cinnamon Star hiding behind the candle on the upper right.**

Another view, with the Cinnamon Star on the upper left. Note that all the cookies are on the upper half of the tree. That’s essential if you have either small children or, in our case, a labrador retriever in residence.

A guest arrives during the holiday season? Invite them in, and say “Please have a treat off the tree!” It captures the spirit of the holiday like nothing else. Tree; decorations; sweets; cookies; and all topped off with hospitality.

Cinnamon Stars make great decorations because they’re sturdy enough to last through the holiday season. Snowflakes have no rival when it comes to appearance, but any humidity in the air will soften them up enough to sag an break through a ribbon. (Don’t even think of hanging them with a metal wire). And gingerbreads tend to be so thick and heavy that they make the branches sag if you aren’t careful. Cinnamon Stars are ideal.

You can decorate Cinnamon Stars by tinting the dough, the icing, or both. Or by standard decorating after they’re baked using royal icing, dragees, luster dust, etc. We tend to keep them plain, but that’s a question of taste.

As for “familiar”, there is absolutely nothing in this cookie that will surprise or offend the most tender of American palates. Cinnamon Stars taste like dense, chewy, lemony Snickerdoodles with a fantastic appearance, and a lot of fragrant nuts. It’s a no risk experiment.

A FINAL BONUS: THREE FREE TIPS THAT AREN’T IN THE BOOK:

The recipe calls for three egg whites. That works, but things get tight when you try to toe the line between reserving what you want for the icing, and still having enough to hold all the nuts. You’ll gain safety margin if you use size XL egg whites instead of the standard U.S. “large”.
Add a tablespoon of molasses to the dough if you want a higher contrast between the base and the bright white icing. It changes the flavor a bit, but not unpleasantly. Our book includes a standard variation on this recipe (Vanilla Sticks), and that is more different than the effect of a little molasses.
Remember that you don’t need to spread your icing all the way to the edge. The cookies look just as good, and arguably better, if you leave a gap between the edge of the icing and the edge of the cookie. To be completely honest, we only avoid that because our decoration skills aren’t up to that level of precision. Baking, yes. Precision artistry? Not so much.

And now, on to the recipe. Enjoy! This was the very first Pavelle addition to the Stoy family collection of every-year cookies. Don’t be at all surprised if it turns out to be mandatory for your family too.

NOTE: If the cookies dry out, put them in a tin with a piece of bread and leave it overnight. Come the next day they’ll be perfect all over again.

CZECH BEAR PAWS (MEDVEDI TLAPICKY) – Nailed at last! With nut, chocolate, and honey versions

The recipe for Bear Paws took us more time than any other recipe we’ve dealt with so far. It took that long because Kate knew what they were supposed to be, and there wasn’t a single version that even came close. It was maddening! We went through more than a dozen trials trying to nail things down. Probably closer to 20. At some point you stop keeping count.

As always, feel free to skip to the bottom if you want the recipe without the blow by blow development choices.

Building Up From Flour And Nuts

The first problem we faced had to do with flour. Most Czech recipes specify an even 3 cups of flour (400-425 g) but our experiments with this amount failed. The flour you buy in Prague is a little coarser and lower-protein than the AP flour used here, and the amounts did not translate. We vacillated between adapting the recipe around that standard, or reducing the amount of flour to match the other ingredients. In the end we went with the latter, settling on 2¾ cups (around 350 g). (NOTE: For what it’s worth, adding an egg yolk had been the best solution at the 3-cup level and we invite you to use it if you want a cookie that’s a bit less heavy on the nuts. We needed an egg yolk anyway for the chocolate version.)

Next up came the nuts. You need to understand that nut cookies lie close to all Czech hearts, as exemplified by the national adoration for Nut Horns. Bear Paws don’t go quite that far, but they’re still a nut-centric treat. That meant we had to spend a lot of time playing with the flavor and texture at the same time we were working on the flour as well. Quick tip: there is a reason why scientists insist on changing only one variable at a time.

But we got there in the end! A big key to getting this recipe “right” lies in using different sizes of walnut (ground and also chopped), combined with some other nut for a more complex flavor. We ended up using ground almonds. Hazelnuts would have worked too, but I put my foot down. “Enough is enough. People who want nut perfection should turn the page to the Nut Horns recipe!” Besides, cookbook recipes should have different flavors, not just different shapes and textures. We weren’t after Nut Horns made in a mold.

The same logic applied to toasting the nuts in advance. We do that religiously for Nut Horns, but chose not to for Bear Paws. The added flavor, combined with the spice/honey flavors, did not add enough to justify the extra work, especially when we wanted the final product to stand out as something different.

But – the big “but” – you Dear Reader, do not have that same need! These may be forks in the road where you want to go right instead of left. Are you a founding member in the Cult of Filbert? If so, by all means feel free to replace all or part of the almonds with hazelnuts. (Just be sure to make a note in your book about the experiment and its results, so both the future you and your heirs won’t have to rely on the vagaries of the mind). The same thing goes for the soft nut component. We used walnuts because that’s what they have in Prague, and Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World focuses on traditional recipes rather than exploring new possibilities. But there’s no reason why American pecans would not work as well as walnuts, and maybe even better. Go ahead and give them a try. The same goes for cashews, macadamia nuts, and even peanuts. Play to your heart’s content.

Moving On To The Details

That covered the two main ingredients: flour and nuts. Our next few batches involved ventures into Spice Cookie Land. This, thank heaven, took less time than the first set of issues. The only complication lay in customizing the mix for the nut-only version and the chocolate-nut variation;, and then a third time for my Honey Bear Paws (which have now become the family favorite).

AN ASIDE: Yes, I really did put the name “Hunny Bear Paws” down as the initial recipe title for that variation. You have Kate to thank for avoiding the pain that eye roll would have caused. Just note that she issued the veto more because they were too good, than in protest against poor Pooh. “There’s nothing childish about that cookie, and it doesn’t deserve a childish name!” Fair enough. She was right on both accounts.

Of Cookies That Stick And Life Hacks Around Them

Don’t let the appearance confuse you! Actual Madeleines are a small, handheld cake. Bear Paws are a dense, flavorful nut-and-spice cookie. Only the shapes are the same, and in the Czech Republic people use the traditional paw-shaped molds instead.

Think we were done? Nope. There were two separate issues that go to the question of casualties. First, as Kate wrote in the book, “Whether in Prague or in Princeton, these were a right pain to make. The reason? They were tender, they stuck to the molds, and the yield was relatively low compared to cut-out cookies.” We tried, but could not solve that inherent problem.

Coat your your trays well with both butter and flour. Very well indeed. Fail and you won’t be happy.

But that still left us with some family history to contend with. Kate’s Grandma Kandler actually liked to have a certain level of “casualties” because they made perfect snacks to go with her daily cup of tea. [NOTE FROM SCOTT: And perhaps as perfect lures to gain tea-time with a cookie-obsessed granddaughter…? Grownups are tricky that way.]

Kate’s mom faced a different problem after they immigrated to America. She tried to avoid the casualties. First, because a lot of nuts were hard to find back in the 1980’s (particularly hazelnuts), and second, because she got less joy from sampling the wares. So Mom created a life-hack instead. Old fashioned Bear Paws resulted in too many losses? No problem. She saved those casualties in a big bag along with all the other damaged nut, spice, and butter cookies, and then combined them to make what we’ll call “Smart Lady Bear Paws.”

After everything else was done, Jarmila took out that bag of broken bits, tossed them into a food processor, and ground them into crumbs. Then she bound the crumbs with an egg-white meringue and voila! A tasty and pre-sweetened Casualty Macaroon dough! But then she made the next discovery; that dough would hold its shape if baked in a (religiously buttered and floured) Madeleine mold. And it was much less fragile than true, old fashioned Bear Paws. What came next… Well, let’s just say that the original ursine appendage cookies found themselves on the endangered species list.

That trick reduced Mom’s stress level a good deal, but it added to ours. Did we need to include the egg white version too? Should we just focus on the original ones you’d buy from a bakery in Prague? Should it be a separate cookie, a variation, or a Cookie Nerd note about casualties?

We went a good way down that road before I put my foot down again. “We’re writing a book about Heritage Cookies, not life hacks. The Smart Lady version might be a family tradition, but it hasn’t been around long enough to qualify as a heritage recipe.” And 20 darned attempts was enough. Besides, I wasn’t producing that many casualties after all that practice.

KATE: Bwaa haaa haaa! Tee hee hee hee!

SCOTT: She really does tee-hee. Honest.

KATE: Well, that part is true.

SCOTT: And no, the scarcity is not tied to me testing the bake! Besides, that’s the baker’s privilege.

KATE: ~~omitted~~. [Author’s privilege].

SCOTT: Did you know, Dear Reader, that some people view unladylike words as even worse than unladylike guffaws?

KATE: Touchy, aren’t we? Tee hee hee.

But seriously – how do you write a recipe when there’s no way to know the proportion you’ll have of spice cookie bits compared to broken Butter Jellies and Bear Paws? Jarmila’s life hack wasn’t a “recipe,” it was a way to beat the system. And now you know it too.

Final Notes

About the decorations… The photos in our book show the full, impossibly cute version but there’s no need to go that far. We went whole hog with the decorations so the photo would tell a story that prevented people from confusing these for actual Madeleines.

The thing is, Kate will argue that less really is more in this case. The cookie itself tastes and feels amazing all on its own. All three varieties! The decorations add some extra sweetness, and the nut “claws” mess with that texture. There is something to be said for impossible cuteness, but fair is fair: you, Dear Reader, deserve to know that our household version does get baked in the Madeleine trays, but they’re served with nothing more than a dusting of powdered sugar. Especially the Honey Bear Paws.

And that covers it. Sorry for the length, but getting these right really was a saga. Enjoy!

MOLDED GINGERBREAD – How about a special treat?

Greetings from Kate!

One of my favorite bakes is gingerbread, and I especially like the way it comes out of the mold. I know that Scott gave you got a molded cookie in a recent blog, but we tend to start with the hardest ones first. We also start our baking with cookies that need to sit for a while and soften naturally.

Behold the soft plentitude of molasses and spices! The glaze is optional – I like to mix rum or brandy with powdered sugar until it’s thin enough to paint on with a soft, clean paintbrush.

These beauties are raw, the way they come out of the carved wooden mold. Their features dull a little upon baking, but the glaze will bring them back out. Stay tuned for more images later.

[Two Tricks From Scott:

For finer features, replace the baking soda in your recipe with Hartshorn a/k/a baker’s ammonia a/k/a ammonium carbonate a/k/a smelling salts. This 19th-century leavener creates smaller, more even bubbles that in turn create a finer, better refined texture.
Leave the formed cookies out to dry overnight, preferably in the fridge or under a fan. This will create a surface that’s just a little firmer than the bottoms that were resting on your parchment or tray. When the cookies rise during baking, Boyle’s Law says they will tend to have that surface rise up instead of spreading out with the moister, underneath part of the dough.

These are the two main tricks that allow for the creation of super-fine features on Springerle, the smooth caps on Macarons, and all the other cookies that feature a “foot” on the bottom..

And now I’m off to order our special, “we’re releasing our cookbook” tins! We’re not scouring local dollar stores this time. I want all the tins to have a nice, streamlined design and a custom-made label that will echo the branding of the cookbook cover – something I hope to show you next week.

Till then, happy baking!

~Kate