We often discover something new and exciting as we experiment when odd or exotic recipes appear on the radar. We expected no less with this one. “Crackers?” It had to be a European version of those crispy, crunchy Mediterranean tea cookies. Right?
Nope. These taste like a standard sugar cookie, and earned their name by mirroring the appearance and texture of a classic saltine a/k/a soda cracker. They are eminently snackable too. Dangerously so. Each piece is so small that you will find yourself innocently popping five or ten at a sitting, which actually adds up to more than that regular sized sugar cookie you would have been able to resist.
Unique, fascinating, and familiar all at once. How cool is that?
The Mediterranean recipes both start with oil. The older versions of this recipe start with lard or shortening. Seems like an obvious connection, right? The only unusual thing was the math. All the classic Ammonia a/k/a Hartshorn Cookie recipes ended up with a really odd amount of fat when normalized to a reasonable amount of flour. A bit more than three tablespoons. At the same time, the flour measurements got weird if we tried to normalize things from the fat or sugar point of view.
Version 1.0
I decided to plan out my first test recipe by weight since the numbers weren’t that far off. 100 grams of lard, 100 grams of sugar, and 250 grams of flour. 1 to 1 to 2½, spread over two baking sheets. The result? Extraordinarily thin crackers that tasted like a cookie, but with a very distinct flavor from the fat. They were also a little greasy.
NOTE FROM KATE: They were a fun kind of greasy! Sometimes, using an animal fat you already have saved from a roast can give this kind of a cookie a very interesting character. Flaky tenderness and a hint of other flavors add to the gustatory experience. I like knowing that you’re eating a natural product and not a highly processed shortening. Scott will disparage that from time to time as “virtue points,” but they matter to me.
Fair enough. 250 grams of flour equals 1¾ cups of flour. The next batch would increase the flour to an even two cups. That would take care of the greasiness. The sugar level was about right. But what about that very lard-heavy flavor? What could I do for people who prefer something less distinctive and more common? Shortening, yes… but the flavor wasn’t loud enough to do with a totally neutral fat. So why not clarified butter?
How much butter would I need? Butter is about 16-18% water… Assume that’s been cooked that off, and account for a little more weight from the milk solids… And you end up with…
Son. Of. A. [cough]! You end up with exactly 4 ounces, dead on the nose. And what is 4 ounces? Exactly one standard stick of butter, or and even ½ cup.
And was I wasting effort and cleaning time by assuming the recipe called for two baking sheets? I had carefully rotated the pans midway through because thin dough and high heat are a bad combination. But even so we ended up with one tray browned more on the top, and the other tray more on the bottom. Annoying. And there was an awful lot of room around the dough on each tray, so…
Version 2.0
(A) Clarified butter instead of lard. (B) A little more flour. (C) Roll it all out to fit on a single sheet pan, and see if it’s still thin enough to be a “cracker.” (D) Adjust the cooking time to account for the extra thickness, and having only one pan in the oven.
This is how they come out of the oven. See the uneven break by the bottom right? That’s what happens if you merely cut the lines without giving the wheel/blade a little wiggle to add an extra hint of separation.
This experiment told us (almost) everything we needed to know.
I had the proportions nailed. The dough was easy to make, easy to handle, and just plain worked.
This amount of dough rolls out thin – something on the order of ⅛” when all is said and done – but that’s still a big difference from “roll until you can roll no more.” The final result ended up being just under 3/16“, which definitely gave more of a cookie vibe than a cracker.
The flavor changed radically. Lard notes versus butter notes were extremely clear when we tasted them side by side.
The butter version does indeed taste standard. Just like a sugar cookie. But is there anything easier to vary than a sugar cookie? Tea, chai, cinnamon, other spices, herbs… This is clearly a cookie that bakers can play with to an all but infinite extent.
Those darned lines aren’t always clean enough when the cookie comes out of the oven.
Thick indeed! These come off as more “cookie” than “cracker.” Note how the lack of docking adds to that.
This cookie was, quite honestly, good enough to publish. But we weren’t done just yet! Could we customize this into a true illusion cookie with a taste that would complement a cookie tray instead of just fitting right in with so many other tastealikes?
Digression: Revisiting The Ratio Of Ingredients
Remember how odd the ingredient list seemed at the start of this project? And how the fat didn’t work out evenly until we figured out that it equaled a 4 oz. stick of butter that’s been clarified? But the overall ratios still didn’t work out to even numbers by weight, as experience taught they should in such an old recipe?
But now, with some extra flour and a more limited amount of fat… Aha! These changes created something very close to a 1:1:3 ratio of fat:sugar:flour. Gotcha!
Version 3.0 (see below) established our preference for a little less in the way of both fat and sugar, and that is what the recipe now says, but we have no doubt how Grandma taught the recipe by that ratio back in the day.
Version 3.0
Use the 1:1:3 ratio of ingredients;
Add some bacon fat in place of butter (we ended up with 2 tablespoons after I rendered four slices in a pan);
Roll out two trays as thin as possible, and only bake one at a time;
Dock the dough to make the final product look more like a saltine; and
Move some of the sugar from the inside to a sprinkling on top that would mimic the salt on an actual cracker.
The result? Have a look!
[Shakes head]. I don’t know how I missed it, but this is a marvelous illusion cookie. It actually fooled our real life daughter when she stopped in to visit! That docking made a much bigger difference than I ever imagined.
We could taste the bacon, but only because we knew it was there. The bacon also added a healthy hit of extra salt that we both enjoyed – enough to bump the basic salt level in the recipe up from ¼ to ½ teaspoon (though we might revert to the reduced amount if we work with salty bacon fat again). I even enjoyed sprinkling the tops with a little bit of extra salt to enhance the effect. It now appears as an option in the recipe. Here, among friends, I will admit to recommending that option because it makes the cookie taste more distinctive. But that’s taste, not tradition.
IMPORTANT NOTE: We also learned, to our chagrin, that simply marking the lines with a fluted wheel isn’t enough. We lost several “crackers” because they baked together too firmly, and wouldn’t snap along the lines. Even more than we did with the thick cookie (see photo above).
LESSON LEARNED: Don’t just mark those lines; mark them clearly and emphatically, with a little wiggle of the wheel or blade to be on the safe side. You need the pieces to bake together in order to have that crackerish center show, but you also need the separations clean enough to be sure they will break evenly.
The only other adjustments came down to fine tuning the ratio. Hark! Can you hear your great-great Grandma speaking from the beyond? “It’s a simple ratio dear. Three parts flour, to one part sugar, and one part lard. But here’s the secret… They taste even better if you take back a spoonful of the sugar and fat.”
Grandma is great. Grandma is wise. Listen to your great-great Grandma.
Conclusion
This is one of those cookies where we started out thinking “A,” only to discover it was really a “B.” This is not one of those cracker-crisp Mediterranean tea cookies. It’s more like a good, cracker-crisp sugar cookie designed to create a convincing, extremely snackable illusion.
NOTE FROM KATE: Be careful with these – they are quite more-ish! The texture is a lot of fun. You will easily snack on five cookies when you would’ve said a “no, thank you” to a similar cookie in its one-piece form.
Here’s a summary of the lessons learned:
The dough follows a 1:1:3 ratio of fat to sugar to flour, with a spoonful taken back from the first two.
The cookie changes in wonderful ways if you mix and match different fats in place of the clarified butter. We tried them with lard alone, butter alone, and butter mixed with bacon fat. The last was the best, partly because we liked the extra salt.
The illusion part matters, so roll the dough out super thin, take the time to dock them with a fork, and sprinkle on a bit of sugar to fully recreate the saltine look. Sprinkling on some kosher salt will also help the illusion, and has the side effect of making the cookie taste more distinctive.
Maintain an even thickness. Smeared edges cook faster than rolled centers.
Mark the dividing lines emphatically, with a little wiggle of the wheel/blade to add some room. The helps the “crackers” to separate cleanly.
Just don’t separate them too much, because those broken-open sides show off the crackerish interior, which is both pretty and useful for the illusion.
Bake only one tray at a time, and spin the tray just after the estimated halfway point. Two trays won’t cook evenly, and oven hot spots really show.
The bake is done when the top turns cracker-tan brown. Go by that, not the designated baking time.
Hartshorn is mandatory. Baking soda/powder yield a standard cookie texture.
All in all? A very successful experiment, and a cookie we will gladly add to the repertoire. Especially if we want something more on the snackable side than a proper dessert, or there’s someone coming over who’d be fun to fool…
Hartshorn a/k/a baker’s ammonia a/k/a ammonium carbonate a/k/a smelling salts is an old frenemy we recently studied in more detail. This was the chemical leavening agent from antiquity through medieval times and on into the 19th century, when it got replaced in most recipes by baking soda and powder. Why? Because it’s also known as “smelling salts,” and smells so foul that you can’t even nibble on dough samples before they bake. Not that I would ever do such a thing, but rumor has reached my ears… [Ahem]. The smell disappears during baking, but still. Who wants a product like that in their pantry where a spill can make your cat box seem friendly?
NOTE FROM KATE: You will only taste-test this dough once. At which point you will also spit the dough into the sink and reach for a glass of water. Yuck! The baked cookies, though, are as lovely and welcoming as they are versatile. Even better, they hold a basic shape and provide a lily-white canvas for any decorating ambitions.
In today’s age hartshorn has become a specialty leavener. And yet it is still around because it produces a different kind of rise than baking soda/powder; a lighter, crispier, more even texture that’s essential to recipes like Springerle, Swedish Drömmar, fine-featured molded gingerbreads, and texture-first specialties like Hungarian Kvircedli and Ammonia Crackers. Hartshorn has its flaws, but the upside can be spectacular.
Enter this cookie: Polish Ammonia Cookies (“CiasteczkaAmoniaczki”), which I hereby rechristen as Vanilla Puffs to reflect the remarkable effect of their magic ingredient. Plus variations like Peppermint Puffs, Anise Puffs, Lemon Puffs, etc. “Puffs” being the key word because that’s the closest I can come to describing the texture: a shatteringly crisp, sugary crust around an inside so pillowy and puffy that they have a universal appeal. Most cookies will have a few, recalcitrant protesters who just don’t get it. Everybody likes Ammonia Cookies. They may only be your third-favorite on the tray, but I can 100% guarantee they’ll be gone at least as fast as the ones you would choose for yourself.
Try this cookie and you will never again wonder why serious bakers remain willing to put up with hartshorn’s challenges. The cost is worth the payoff.
The Dough is Rough-Puff Pastry (A Flaky Cookie) In Disguise!
Want a laugh? I went through the whole recipe testing process on these with the niggling feeling that I knew the recipe from somewhere, even though I’ve never made anything like it. The penny dropped around five minutes ago.
The niggling finally got bad enough for me to run back to Volume I for a scan of the ratio tables at the start of each chapter. And sure enough, there it was. The proportions of flour, butter, sour cream, and sugar are an all but perfect match to flaky cookies made from our Faux Puff Pastry recipe (a/k/a “rough puff”). The only real differences are the handling and the addition of a massive amount of hartshorn.
You make rough-puff dough by cutting butter into a combination of flour and a small amount of sugar, in order to achieve the “pebbly” texture of a piecrust with extra-large butter chunks. Then, instead of cutting it finer, as you would for that piecrust, you roll the dough out in a few “envelope turns” before finally rolling-and-cutting your cookie shapes. It’s a minor P.I.T.A., yes, but much easier than the major P.I.T.A. of traditional puff pastry.
This dough? Just cut the butter down to piecrust-texture in a food processor, include a generous amount of hartshorn, and presto! Something that tastes like puff pastry, and has a crispy outside, but has the pillowy interior you can only achieve with baker’s ammonia.
Peppermint trees. See the contrast of crispy crust to center puff?
The Sugar Crust
Stark white from the sugar crust, and just as good as they are pretty
There’s a pretty well established pattern for flaky cookies of all types:
Palmiers a/k/a Elephant Ears? Roll out some puff pastry (or other flaky-cookie dough), coat it generously with cinnamon sugar, roll it back into a tube like a jelly roll a/k/a roulade, and then slice-and-bake.
Dutch Krakelingen? Cut off strips of that same dough, roll in cinnamon sugar, and then shape them into pretzels before baking.
Rugelach? Do the jelly roll thing with a layer inside made from a fruit-and-nut filling, and then coat with cinnamon sugar before baking.
Goose Feet a/k/a “Gusine Tlapki”? Roll, sprinkle with spice-sugar (not necessarily cinnamon), and then cut out large circles which you fold into quarters.
Kolache? Roll, cut out squares, dab with fruit filling, fold up two corners, and then sprinkle with plain sugar.
Get it? Ammonia Cookies aren’t any different except you (a) can readily flavor the dough, and (b) can roll-and-cut any shape of cookie, and (c) should, not just can, coat the outside in sugar alone. The snowy, extra-crunchy outer crust is part of the experience.
We did test cinnamon sugar in case you’re wondering, and it works perfectly well, but it also standardizes the whole experience. Both Kate and I preferred these with sugar alone.
The Baking and Fumigation Times
The flaky cookies listed above typically bake at 350° F (175° C) for about 15 minutes, give or take according to thickness. Ammonia Cookies work a little better if you cook them at the same temperature for only 12-13 minutes. The shorter baking time helps to preserve that pillowy interior, whereas the flaky cookies want to emphasize their crispness.
The combination of a moist dough and a shorter baking time can cause a problem, however: a residual whiff of ammonia left over in the baked cookies, even after they cool. It usually isn’t all that strong, and it only happens about 75% of the time, but that’s still an issue you need to keep in mind.
The solution couldn’t be easier. Leave the baked cookies out for an hour or two. That should be all it takes for the dissolved ammonia gas to dissipate into the air. If they were really bad? Still simple. Wait a little longer.
Hartshorn giveth, and hartshorn taketh away.
The Cut Outs
Ammonia cookies work with almost any basic shape, but expand too much for anything with features. I tested stars, hearts, circles, a mushroom shape, fluted ovals, snowmen, and a Christmas ornament shape. Everything worked except the ornaments, snowman, and the fluted ovals. Those could still be recognized by someone who knew what they were supposed to be, but they lost the outside details that make them more than just shapes.
Anise hearts and peppermint trees. “High note” flavors show particularly well in this cookie.
Feel Free To Customize!
Do some research on cookies made with hartshorn and these basic proportions. You will quickly find several much loved variations. These include:
Peppermint Ammonia Cookies (add in peppermint oil), which are very popular in the American Midwest, and generally attributed to German immigrants;
Anise Ammonia Cookies (add in anise oil), same thing with what seems to be inspiration as much as tradition;
Ginger Ammonia Cookies (add in a generous amount of dried ginger), with some optional extras for those who want to try a popular Slovak variation.
We tested all of the above, and they all worked just as well as the standard vanilla version. I’ve no reason to believe other spices wouldn’t be just as good. These may be my new favorite when it comes to featuring one particular flavor.
FWIW, our 2024 Christmas tray is going to include the Peppermint version because we have nothing else even close to that flavor profile, and I may throw in a few vanilla ones too. Not that a spice version will find any protesters. Hmmm…
Can You Simply Put The Sugar In The Dough?
We tried it, and the answer is “Yes.” The cookie works fine. But we really like the showy, snowy white crust that comes from following the recipe, and it enhances that wonderful contrast between the inside and outside. The most I would actually recommend is the addition of something to show an inside flavor. Perhaps some anise seeds, or some bits of peppermint-green sugar.
Those flavored versions carry a significant odor, but who wants to eat the cookie I just sniffed and then put back on the tray?
Sour Cream? Is That Traditional?
Is it fair to answer that with a “Yes, but…?” Sour cream per se has been around for most of human history. After all, the root definition is nothing more than fermented cream. Some say it traces back to the Mongol hordes that made kumiss from mare’s milk, but I personally find that hard to believe. Not because the Mongols didn’t do just that, and helped to spread the idea. I just doubt that no one in human history came up with such an obvious idea before that. It certainly predates the arrival of Europeans in the new world.
I won’t speculate about the reasons, but research shows that sour cream has always been more common in central and Eastern Europe than over by the Atlantic. This enters into the history with the great migrations of Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Germans, etc. into the U.S. from the mid 1800’s on. They brought sour cream with them, where it met the rising force of the Industrial Revolution and morphed.
What had been a hand crafted, fairly regional staple became an industrially produced, properly pasteurized dairy product sold in every market across the land. Dips made with sour cream became a capital-T Thing. Baked potatoes began to look naked without it. Mexicans used it every bit as much. And it became a common, if relatively minor ingredient in the baking repertoire of the North American continent. At which point it traveled back to Europe, and began to expand in the old world too.
You will note that we call this a Polish cookie (“amoniaczki”), because that seems to be ground central for where it is enjoyed in Europe, and was such a major part of the immigrant population that filled the American midwest, where this cookie centers in North America. So… did the original European version use sour cream, or was it a case of American ingenuity improving on the original, which then made its way back to Poland along with industrial production?
I cannot answer that. I can only confirm that European variants using eggs instead of sour cream are easy to find; that we tested them; and that sour cream is definitely the way to go. It just works better.
Can I use Baking Powder or Soda For Convenience?
We liked this cookie so much that I felt compelled to test this, and the answer is, “Only if you must.” Texture is major part of this cookie’s appeal. The baking powder ones looked okay, and tasted fine, but they simply weren’t the same. The almost-crispy crust diminished down to a mere sugar-crust, and the exciting fluff-honeycomb interior became a standard, soft one.
Would we make them in a pinch using baking powder or soda? Hmmm. I suppose we might. Particularly if we wanted a softer cookie with a distinctly clear peppermint or anise note. But to be honest, we would only do it as a giveaway cookie because now that we’ve had the real thing, they would be too disappointing for either of us to really enjoy.
Conclusion
This is a fun cookie. Kate got a bit old grin on her face at the first bite, and said “It tastes like a hug!” I had to agree. But it’s not a hug from your Grandma, or spouse, or parent, or child. Nor anyone else you deeply love. Those have too much emotional freight. Ammonia Cookies are a hug from that friend you’re meeting for lunch, or one of your daughter’s little playmates.
Simple, companionable, and yet somehow special at the same time – from both a baker’s perspective, and a human one. And that’s just the vanilla version. The cookie’s flexibility as a base for other and custom creations only makes it that much better.
Dense nutty shortbread with an apricot filling and chocolate coating. What’s not to love?
“There is a tide in the affairs of bakers. Which, taken at the flood, leads to cookies of legend.”
Williamnot Shakesthepan, ‘Julius Eater’
The bakers of Imperial Austria were always good, but immortality escaped them until the creation of a series of desserts in the 1800’s. Yes, Linzer Tarts date back to at least the 1600’s. But nailing it? Pre- and post-French Revolution. One example is Sachertorte, created in 1832; a dense, extremely chocolatey layer cake with a generous amount of apricot jam on the inside. Ischler Cookies are another.
This particular cookie was created for Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1849 at the spa town of Bad Ischl. Look with care and you’ll see a marriage of the first two; the buttery, nutty, Linzer shortbread sharing the stage with apricot filling and dark chocolate counterpoints.
Exquisite.
As always, skip to the bottom if you are only here for the recipe. Most of this article concerns the choices we made to get there.
MORE A “PROFILE” THAN A “RECIPE”
A search for “Ischler Cookies Recipe” yields somewhere in the area of 2,000 recipes in English alone, and another 10,000 in German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and any number of other languages. Plus books, of course. I’ve scanned maybe a hundred in all, with close study of several dozen, and all the work done on ours. On that authority I feel confident about the [lack of a] target definition:
A sandwich cookie made from a tender, nut-heavy shortbread;
An apricot filling, which often gets varied in the name of creativity;
And a densely chocolate element, which can take any form that human ingenuity can contrive.
This cookie has been around for more than 170 years, and the recipe now has all but infinite variations. If you insist, I will admit to a belief that the original cookie used a lot of hazelnuts, had an apricot filling, and was enrobed in chocolate, but that is based purely on inference and guesswork. Why hazelnuts? Because it pairs so very well with chocolate. Why enrobed instead of sandwiched? Well, if I was a pastry chef, and I wanted to impress an Emperor, that would be my default.
Sensible? Yes. A statement of fact? Not exactly.
So here’s the bottom line. Our version of this recipe is as good as any, better than most, and is 100%, capital-R Right. But that doesn’t mean that other recipes are capital-letter Wrong. They aren’t. We’re looking at a flavor profile, not a fixed recipe. Everything is “right” so long as it has the nutty shortbread, jam filling, and distinct hit of chocolate.
THE NUTTY SHORTBREAD
I spent years refining the proportions in my nutty Linzer Tart dough to perfection, and there is no reason to mess with success for this one. Here is the basic formula:
≈ 1 cup (7 oz = 185 g) of fine nut meal, ideally from gently toasted nuts;
2 sticks (1 cup = 8 oz = 225 g) of butter;
2 cups (10 oz = 185 g) of flour;
One large or XL egg yolk;
A small amount of baking powder; and
A healthy pinch (¼ tsp.) of salt.
Tests pushed us to add an extra half cup of flour to the dough, plus a little beyond that for oily walnuts, but that’s basically where we ended up.
What Nuts To Use? Any. Most modern American recipes tend toward almonds as the nut of choice. Modern recipes from Austria tend to use hazelnuts (filberts). The Hungarians often favor walnuts. Kate and I usually recommend a mix of nuts, but it had to be tested. We did so. And the result was clear: It doesn’t really matter.
NOTE FROM KATE: I figure the preferred nut may have also been a function of availability. The Hungarian versions favor walnuts, which they grow locally. In Bohemia (and I believe Austria) you can find hazelnuts bushes growing prolifically near every village, much to the delight of both youngsters and squirrels. So they make more sense for where I grew up. That said, the 1924 Sandtnerova cookbook uses almonds for almost everything, including her version of Ischler Cookies, and Austria sat in the middle of all these trade routes during Imperial times. Thus the Bad Ischl bakers would have had ready access to all three.
The photos in this post vary from examples that are pure walnut through pure hazelnut, 2:1 hazelnuts and almonds, and 3:1 hazelnuts and walnuts. They look the same, and while a devoted taster can tell one from the other (especially when the nuts are toasted), every variation was just as delicious as the last. So choose what you wish according to personal taste, budget, and pantry.
“What about oddball nuts like pecans, peanuts, macadamia, etc.?” Yes, that’s valid too. Look at the definition! “Nut meal” it says, and that is all it means. You’ll just be making another of those infinite and delicious variations. The only change is the obvious one: walnuts and other oilier nuts create a looser dough, which you’ll need to compensate for by adding some extra flour during the rolling phase. (NOTE FROM KATE: Macadamias would be interesting. They are the oiliest nut in existence and would produce a very short dough. I can already taste a Hawaiian take on the Ischler, with a tropical jam filling and a white chocolate coating on top!)
What Texture of Nuts? This one is more defined. Use nut meal nut flour, without any significant chunks of the sort you’d want if we used the word “chopped.” Yes, many people prefer to have little pops of crunchy nuts in their cookies. And yes, it adds some texture while also being convenient. After all, that is what you can get from a food processor. It just isn’t capital-R Right, because food processors did not exist in 1849. Bakers used table mounted grinders instead. Kate’s Grandma Kandler had one that looked a lot like this:
Image shows a 1930’s version from the Czech company Porkert
(NOTE FROM KATE: Scott has this part only half right. Grandma used one like this for poppy seed, and only occasionally for walnuts (which she used in her zimtsterne-like meringue sticks). She didn’t have a nut grinder for hazelnuts or the oh-so-rare almonds. Those she ground on the Czech equivalent of a box grater, one nut at a time, while listening to the radio and cursing. That works fine if you use the small slicing openings, but it’s laborious and does a job on your manicure.
You might ask, “Why didn’t she have the menfolk do it?” The answer is twofold: 1. The menfolk were busy pounding regular sugar into powdered sugar using a brass mortar and pestle. 2. She didn’t trust the menfolk not to eat the nuts. They were hard to obtain during the product shortages of the communist era, and she often had to visit numerous stores with hours-long lines just to get two small baggies of hazelnuts. For a great tool we can use now, keep reading.)
We have gotten by for 30 years with a much smaller and more familiar device:
Image shows the Oxo Rotary Grater, often used for Parmesan cheese but just as effective with nuts.
Both of those grinders inhale whole nuts and breathe out either fine shreds or powder, depending on which grating blade you insert. They do not produce “chopped” nuts. Thus we believe that (a) nut meal is almost certainly the texture used in the 1849 version of this cookie; (b) it’s a texture we prefer to eat; and therefore (c) it is the texture this recipe recommends. [NOTE: Almond flour and meal have started to become available in U.S. markets. Hazelnut and walnut meal are a lot harder to find, at least in 2022.]
As for chocolate inside the dough… see below.
Can I add some spice to the dough? Absolutely! Linzer Tarts have a hint of spice, and these can too. Just be judicious. Ischler Tarts have a strong, three-legged theme that every good recipe needs to balance; nutty shortbread, chocolate, and jam. Spices that enhance this balance do nothing but help. Spices that add a fourth layer will throw things awry. We didn’t do a whole lot of experimenting along these lines, but experience suggests that the best approach would focus on a spice that works with your central nuts. E.g., walnuts love to pair with ground cloves and coffee; vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg pair to perfection with hazelnuts; almonds get along cinnamon or an oddball spice like pepper.
THE APRICOT FILLING
Yes, apricot. We defunded the cookie police before publishing this article, so no one’s going to arrest you for using something else. There are, however, a number of reasons to start with this particular fruit:
Apricot and chocolate are a classic Austrian combination, as shown by the much loved Sachertorte;
Raspberry has its own cookie in Linzer Tarts; and
All accounts seem to agree that the original, 1859 recipe did indeed use apricot and not any other fruit.
QED.
Apricot cookie fillings come in two basic versions. The first is slow-cooked puree or compote a/k/a apricot butter, povidla, lekvar, etc. We prefer these fillings for recipes that bake the filling, but with this one – filled after the fact – we recommend the easier route; a modified apricot jam.
Jam fillings present two issues, both of which are easy to solve. #1 is excess moisture that can soak into the cookies and limit their lifespan. #2 is availability, since our stores only carry “apricot preserves,” and that product has enough chunks to detract from your ideal result.
Cookies made with unstrained preserves. See how the bits of fruit hold the two halves apart? It doesn’t hurt the taste at all, but it’s less perfect than what you can do with only a little more effort.
Same cookies, same presentation, but without the chunks of fruit.
We prefer this cookie with a smooth jam instead, and ideally one that’s just a little drier. You can address both concerns by (a) heating preserves until loose, (b) pushing the hot goo through a sieve, and then (c) spiking it with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice or apricot brandy for that certain je ne sais quoi. Apricot perfection with just the texture you want.
I did try to sieve the jam without preheating, hoping to avoid the danger of handling something so hot. Alas, even a coarse sieve wouldn’t do the job. Preserves are just too hefty, and it did nothing about the moisture concern. Thus you are hereby warned about the danger, and we recommend doing it anyway.
THE CHOCOLATE
Yes, a chocolate component is essential. That is what separates this cookie from being a mere variation on Linzer Tarts. Same genus; different species.
What kind of chocolate? That is a matter of some debate. Look at those 12,000 recipes on line and you’ll see that different bakers try to incorporate the chocolate element in every possible way. And I do mean every. We found recipes based on:
Grated or melted chocolate mixed into the dough. This produces a wonderful cookie on its own merits, and it’s the simplest approach.The drawback? It doesn’t have the same ‘Wow’ factor as a chocolate filling or topping, and it adds flavor without texture.
Cocoa powder mixed into the dough. Again, it’s a wonderful cookie on its own, but it lacks in both Wowness and mouthfeel.
A chocolate ganache filling paired with the apricot filling. This is the most common solution in American recipes because it’s simple, tasty, has a great mouthfeel, and is easy to pack. The drawback? It looks good but not great, and too much of either layer will make your filling squirt out the sides.
A ring of chocolate ganache filling with the apricot placed inside. This is a neater variant on #2, because the piping process enforces exactly the sort of filling-discipline you need. The downside? “Piping” is #1, because many people find it fussy and hard. Visual appeal comes in again as #2. There’s nothing wrong with looking at chocolate, but seeing the jam adds a flash of appealing color. #3, I think it messes too much with the balance of flavors, though Kate disagrees. (NOTE FROM KATE: I have a higher tolerance for bitter than Scott, and find the ring of darker chocolate ganache very pleasant. This is especially true for when used with the sweeter chocolate fondant icing – see below. Also, YMMV.)
Chocolate ganache spread or piped over the top. A great compromise, but the ganache can look a little messy if you don’t pay attention, and it makes for a very sticky top. There’s no way at all you could hope to pack it in a tin. Right idea; wrong solution.
Chocolate buttercream cake frosting piped on top. Think of these sandwich cookies as a tiny cupcake made from shortbread instead of batter. Now go ahead and frost that cupcake. Taste: check. Texture: check. Appearance: check. The drawbacks? (A) It moves us away from “cookie” and into “confection,” (B) no one could even dream of packing them in a tin, and (C) there are better answers yet to come.
A chocolate glaze. Looks fine and packs like a charm, but glazes never have the desired mouthfeel, and almost always lack something on the flavor side too.
Melted chocolate a/k/a why get weird? Alas, but the texture is wrong. The cookies wants a coating that feels dry to the fingers, but gives way to the teeth without any effort. The ‘snap’ of actual chocolate turns from asset to issue in this particular case.
Chocolate melted with butter, and then either poured over the top or used as a dip. This is an ideal solution for taste, appearance, and texture, but it also softens at room temperature, which makes it a mess to eat and impossible to ship unless you heroically cut a piece of parchment as protection.
Coverture a/k/a chocolate melted with extra cocoa butter, used as either a coating or a dip. Ding! This is the best solution of all… if you keep cocoa butter on hand, or have access to specialty stores that sell ready made coverture. If you don’t…
A pourable chocolate fondant used as either a coating or a dip. Ding ding! We have finally arrived at our #1 solution for everyday pantries! Looks perfect; thick enough to give an ideal, luscious mouthfeel; dries enough to pack in a tin without worry; and the flavor is exactly as you want, since it can be varied to taste. It’s even pretty easy… or would prove to be after we figured it out.
Want chocolate icing that flows over your cookies, settles into a coating with some heft, is dry to the touch, but melts in your mouth? Pourable fondant is where it’s at.
THE ICING ODYSSEY
You may find this hard to believe, but we really did try every one of the first nine approaches (other than the frosting). See this parallel article on coverture and pourable fondant. Which one do we recommend? It’s chocolate, people! Chocolate wrapped around rich, nutty shortbread that encases a lively hit of bright apricot filling! Don’t stress. This is the very definition of a no-lose situation.
If you keep cocoa butter on hand, go with coverture. If you don’t, whip up a pourable chocolate fondant.
“But should I pour the coating over? Dip the cookies in? Cover only part of the cookies? Apply decorative stripes or some such?
[Sigh] Do what you prefer. We happened to be testing these just in time for Thanksgiving, which led to an extended family vote in favor of coating only the tops with as smooth a layer as possible. Hence the photos. But we can promise that all the others work too. Once again, you cannot lose, so do not stress.
CONCLUSION
Ischler Cookies can hold their own on any cookie tray in the world. They really are that good, and that full of history and heritage.
Are they actually better than all the other cookies in the world? Well, that one’s up to you. They call it taste for a reason, and I cannot speak for yours any more than you can speak for mine. But I can promise you this. Wise men and women will do a lot of careful tasting and re-tasting before reaching any decision.
“I better have just one more to be sure…”
A FEW FINAL NOTES
On storage:
The dough freezes as well as any other so long as you seal it in plastic wrap or an equivalent.
Baked halves keep as well as any others. Just remember that they are fragile, and do best in an airtight container like a cookie tin.
Baked and coated halves freeze well too, but coverture can sometimes develop a whitish bloom (which doesn’t alter the taste, but does detract from their beauty). Fondant made with actual chocolate can do that too, but less so. Fondant made with only cocoa powder doesn’t mind freezing at all.
Filled cookies freeze ‘okay,’ but not ‘well’ because the added moisture of the jam creates a number of potential problems. Better to freeze before filling.
On lifespan:
Ischler Cookies are a little hard if eaten right after they’re filled; remain perfect for up to a week if kept in a tin; and then go downhill.
All we’ve learned on how to make cookie coatings with texture, thicker than icing but thinner than frosting, which are also safe for shipping
Up until now we’ve been happy to use either a thin chocolate glaze, a ganache filling/frosting, or a coating made from actual chocolate melted with butter. Ischler Cookies, a chocolate coated sandwich with nutty shortbread and apricot jam, wanted that chocolate/butter coating, but had to dry into something that could be packed in a tin without heroic efforts like cutting out custom sized bits of parchment paper.
We have now (finally!) found two answers to the dilemma. The first is coverture, which is essentially a chocolate coating made with cocoa butter instead of regular butter. This has a higher melting temperature and won’t lead to sticky hands until you get toward body temperatures. Think of chocolate bars and you’ll have it.
The problem with coverture? It’s very hard to find in a store, and impossible to make at home unless you keep cocoa butter in the pantry. Most people don’t.
That leaves fondant. You may know this better in the rollable form that people drape over cakes. But did you also know about pourable fondant, the version used for petit fours and the like? It creates an icing that’s almost indistinguishable from coverture from both the visual and textural perspectives. It’s just a good bit sweeter and less chocolaty inside the mouth. An ideal compromise for anyone who wants to stick with standard pantry ingredients.
Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World does include a basic pourable fondant recipe, but we never really dug into the subject to understand how and why it works. Until now. Enjoy!
NOTE FROM KATE: APPLICATION TRICKS. If you have great many cookies and a lot of fondant, by all means use a screen and pour over it, as described above. However, this requires extra sheets, space, and materials. We tested it, and it works. I personally find that dipping a cookie in while holding it yields an excellent result, without having to make coating, and is better suited to the average home kitchen. The only downside is chocolate on your fingers. But I have an answer! To keep having from washing your hands, or fighting the constant temptation to lick your fingers, try using a thin, snug glove! It sure worked for me and my work moved faster. Also, I had absolutely no desire to lick my glove!
P.S. THE HOT WATER TRICK. Our experiments on chocolate coatings led to a wonderful trick:
The Problem: Chocolate icings begin to harden as soon as they cool, and it often takes a bit too much time to get all your individual cookies dipped or poured.
The Solution: Duh. Keep your icing warm enough to prevent it from cooling too fast. But how?
The Method: You have a bowl of molten coating. Fill a slightly larger bowl with hot water, and place your bowl of icing inside. The hot water will keep the icing warm for twice as long, leaving you all the time you need to work.
“Caviar!” chorus Kate and Daughter #1. “How nice,” say Scott and Daughter #2.
Part 1 of this extra long article addressed Poppy Seed Drop Cookies and Roll-Outs. This article covers our work on a Heritage Poppy Seed Filling worthy of the name, and a number of other heritage treats that don’t quite make it as “cookies.”
NOTE FROM KATE: We took a while ironing the kinks out of this one because I have some serious opinions about poppy seed. It’s fabulous! In fact, I started eating poppy young. My paternal grandparents had a summer farm house well outside of Prague. The crops grown around it varied every year, depending on what the state farm’s agronomer decided to grow. One year we had peas (which the kids plundered, using the dry peas in spit guns to devastating effect.) The field next to it grew poppies. The frothy sea of white blossoms faded into blue-green marbles, which soon turned into poppy heads. We kids liked to pick them. We would take our poppy heads into the hay loft, pull out our pocket knives, dig out the white seeds in their slightly bitter white sap, and eat it.
When our grandparents found out, they just shook their heads. Grandma Stoy said, “Don’t eat that. It will make you sleepy, and if you eat too much you’ll grow stupid.”
“That’s how opium is made,” Grandpa Stoy said. “And morphine, for surgeries.” We got a whole lecture on the pharmacological importance of poppies. We were also warned not to make opium (addictive, illegal) while Grandma let it slip that she had seen it used to pacify teething babies. “They used to simmer green poppy heads in milk,” she said. “Then they’d wrap soft bread in a linen handkerchief, tie it off, and soak it in the poppy milk. The baby would suck on it, and go to sleep.”
And here you thought I wouldn’t share any heritage information. This is first-hand research!
The drop cookies came together quickly even though I (we’re back to Scott) had to start with some creative baking. This Poppy Seed Filling? Not so much.
You’d think otherwise, because it is incredibly popular and used in inumerable ways. This is the stuff that goes inside Poppy Seed Hamantaschen, Poppy Seed Kolache, Hungarian Poppy Seed Rolls, the swirls inside of Poppy Seed Cakes and Poppy Seed Breads… and on, and on, and on. There should be recipes out there by the dozen. And there are. But in the end it took both experience, failure, and some understanding of the basic chemistry before we could get it capital-R Right.
Problem #1: Poppy Seeds have a bitter edge that’s part of their appeal. But old poppy seeds get bitter in an unpleasant way, and the bitter edge becomes a stabbing blade if you go from “ground” to “pulverized.” I now believe this happens because the seeds, like many other seeds and nuts, are full of oil. Let the oil age, and it goes rancid; i.e., becomes unpleasant. Pulverize the seeds too far in a blender, and the increased surface area of the particles gives the oil a greater opportunity to oxidize, turning harsh in the same way you see with extra virgin olive oil.
Solution 1a: Buy your poppy seeds fresh, and store them in the freezer until you’re ready to use them. This goes double for ground poppy seeds, where the oils are no longer protected by the hulls. [NOTE FROM KATE: A week at room temperature is enough to render ground poppy seeds “less than fresh.” Double that and they will turn bitter. Grandma Kandler always ground them fresh right before use. If you buy them ground to order, as we do, I suggest you make your filling right away, label it, and freeze it.]
Solution 1b: Keep the blender problem in mind, and don’t blithely turn it on for a minute or two. There is “not enough,” but there is also “too much.” The baker’s job is to find the perfect compromise. Mixing whole and ground can also help. [See below].
Solution 1c: If poppy seed flavor lies in the oils, then one should be able to extract those oils into either dairy products or alcohol. And you can! Include some cooking/soaking-in-milk time as part of the recipe. This will even out the flavor, prevent it from going rancid anywhere near as fast, and will also hydrate the whole seeds [see below].
Caviar for Kate
Problem #2:Many sources argue that whole poppy seeds provide some desirable pop in a filling. On the other hand, they can get annoying very fast when you end up with a mouthful of grit; and they get extra gritty when a little dried out. Turning it around, ground poppy seeds release more flavor and also smooth things out, but can make the filling a little too dense, shorten its shelf life, and remove all the pop instead of just some. [NOTE FROM KATE: YMMV on cooking them whole, and I have been as open-minded about it as I could be. Yes, they do soften over time, but even the 50/50 ground:whole compromise left me irritated about the whole seeds’ texture. Let your preference be your guide.]
Solution 2a: Start from a mix of ground and whole. Fact is, blenders are not the best tool for grinding poppy seeds. There are actual mills you can buy for just that specialized purpose.
We buy our poppy seeds in bulk from our inestimably awesome local coffee roaster. They have just such a tool, and will grind on site as requested. Thus it takes us exactly zero effort to order two half bags instead of one big one, with the first half ground and the second half whole. Highly recommended.
The founder, Mr. John Prestogeorge. A gentleman through and through.
Solution 2b: In theory, poppy seeds swell as you cook them in a liquid, and eventually will swell enough to burst. Think of rice, or some other grain like quinoa. They do just the same. Cooking a little longer will make them swell that much more. The technical challenge here is not allowing the mixture go above the barest of a simmer for more than a few minutes. Boiling will turn them bitter for sure. And with a mixture as viscous as a poppy seed filling, reaching a boil is almost a foregone conclusion. You could put the whole mix into a sous vide for a few hours, and that might work quite well, but we haven’t tried it.
Solution 2c: If you go through the whole process and the filling still feels gritty, swirl a pat or two of softened butter into the warm filling. It’s just like finishing a sauce. The butter adds mouthfeel way out of proportion to the amount you use.
Caviar for Miranda, the eldest daughter
Problem #3: Poppy seeds alone are… meh. They come into their own when mixed with some kind of fruit. This is why you almost always see lemon-poppy goods rather than poppy playing a solo tune.
Solution 3a: Include some concentrated fruit flavor (a/k/a honey, jam, preserves, and the like) as one of the sweeteners. This isn’t some secret trick! At least 90% of the recipes out there will include both honey and some kind of jam. The most common ones are povidla (prune butter/filling) and its apricot equivalent lekvar. [N.B. The names are from different languages, and actually mean the same thing: cooked, jam-like fruit filling used in baked goods. Thus the Czechs have both prune povidla and apricot povidla, just as the Hungarians have both apricot and prune lekvar. I use the one name for a prune version and the other for apricot for the sake of reader clarity despite the fact that I know it is linguistically misleading.] But any good fruit preserve will do if that’s the flavor you want to pair! Strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, grape… they’ll all work well and give you a customized “other” to claim as your own.
[NOTE FROM KATE: If you don’t have a jar of prune butter handy, soak two or three prunes with your liquid of choice. The flavor will spread and even out when you the blend the two into filling.]
Solution 3b: I know, I know. ‘But fruit preserves usually include undesirable seeds and/or lumpy bits of pulp! What do I do about those?’ Simple enough. Heat the “jam” until it’s thin, and then push it through a sieve by pressing down hard with a rubber spatula or spoon. The seeds and irredeemable pulp will be left behind, while the rest will get broken down to the point where it no longer matters.
Solution 3c: And yes, mixing sweeteners even more will only increase the complexity. Our recipe uses plain sugar (to ensure the poppy seeds stay front and center), honey (to round everything out), and also choice-of-jam to transform it from ordinary into special.
Solution 3d: Poppy seeds adore fruits of all kinds, but their One True Love is lemon. Don’t fight it. We add some zest into our filling just because it’s part of what everyone thinks of as “poppy seed flavor.” Vanilla also works but we consider that to be more of an optional extra touch.
“Poppy seeds? How nice. Couldn’t we do something with chocolate?” At least according to Scott and Lee (daughter #2)
Final problem: How do you use this wonderful filling now that it’s made and waiting?
THE LAST AND FINAL NOTE FROM KATE: My feelings run strong about this one! I view whole poppy seeds in my filling much like Scott’s opinion on coconut (remember how he called it “Demon Hair” in our Heritage Cookies Alfajores recipe?) Poppy seed filling should be smooth enough not to feel gritty, and should never leave dark seeds between your teeth. If you’re baking for me, use only ground seeds OR blend it after cooking. Remember that, as a rule of thumb, every 10 degrees Centigrade will double the rate of a chemical reaction. Oxidation of the popp yseed oil is just another chemical reaction. Thus, the bitterness will be directly proportional to the combination of time and temperature in the presence of oxygen. (Since the size of our kitchen excludes the installation of a temperature-controlled, nitrogen-atmosphere reaction kettle, we need to plod on like it was 1899.) ANYHOW, you can use fresh-ground poppy seed and gently simmer it, and freeze it. OR, you can pre-soak whole poppy seeds overnight in warm water, strain, gently simmer them, and then blend it till smooth; but only once it has cooled some. (Remember: every degree you shave off helps to slow down the oxidative process.)
And don’t forget the balance flavors? Yes about lemon zest and juice. And yes about some jam. But dry spices have a place too. Clove is lovely in moderation and, not coincidentally, rounds out the flavor in a way that keeps the bitter notes under control.
MY FAVORITE QUICK USE: Eat 3 spoonfuls in the morning while waiting for your coffee to brew. [Note From Scott: I support this. See above for Grandma’s wisdom about teething babies. It works just as well for other dispositions. And now I will run…]
FILLED POPPY SEED COOKIES
Start with a classic filled cookie from any nation starting with Turkey, Greece, and the Balkan states in the south, on up through Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia in the north. Poppy Seed Filling gets used every bit as often as fruit fillings, nut fillings, and sweet cheese fillings. Here are two examples from our original Heritage Cookies of the Old and new World collection.
Served at every Purim feast, Hamantaschen are even more common than Queen Esther Cookies. They are actually named for Haman, the villain of that holiday story.
That’s just two examples. Poppy Seed Filling has as much versatility as anything else in the repertoire.
OTHER POPPY SEED DESSERTS
But that isn’t the end of the story. Poppy-centric desserts abound, and several deserve some special mention. No, they aren’t “cookies,” nor even Not-Quite-A-Cookies. So why talk about them at all? Because the treats I’m about to describe are immensely popular, carry great cultural significance, and often fill the same role as a cookie on many a holiday table. No actual recipes, because that would be a step too far, but honorable and honored mention? Absolutely.
Hungarian Poppy Seed Rolls. These look a bit like jelly rolls or roulades, but those are made by rolling up filling inside a yellow cake or meringue layer. Poppy- and Nut Rolls start with a soft, well sweetened, yeast bread dough. After that it’s just the same. Roll the dough out into a rectangle, let it rise, then spread it all over with a thick layer of Poppy Seed (or Sweet Walnut) Filling, leaving only enough room on the sides to account for the filling that’s bound to squish out. Roll the dough up around the filling very, very gently to make a giant roll, and then bake. When it’s done, cut into slices for both easy eating and to display the spiral pattern on the inside.
Lithuanian Poppy-Bread Holiday Nuggets (“Kūčiukai”). There are websites out there that characterize Kūčiukai and its derivatives, as a “cookie”. It isn’t. Kūčiukai are a straightforward, moderately sweet yeast bread stuffed to the gills with whole and/or ground poppy seeds. Roll the dough out into a thin sausages maybe ½” (1-1½ cm) thick; cut them into ¾” (2 cm) pieces; bake until fully done and even a little crispy; and then serve them in a big bowl for the Christmas feast.
Ancient baltic tradition uses Kūčiukai in several ways, ranging from something like cereal floated in a bowl of sweet poppy seed milk, to croutons in a bowl of thickened fruit soup (the most common name is “Kissel”). And, of course, as the object of snitch-and-snack raids by both the young and the young at heart.
That’s why some people call this a “cookie” to begin with? Consider this:
Kūčiukai served in sweet poppy milk or Kissel serve as sweet endings to the feast… just like cookies in the more western nations.
Kūčiukai are bait for tiny hands… just like western “cookies.”
And Kūčiukai are all but mandatory for the holiday gathering… again, just like the things we’d all describe as “proper” cookies.
Plus there is no other category in which you could put Kūčiukai from the pure translation point of view, because other cultures have no equivalent.
So Kūčiukai may not be a “cookie” for our purposes, but they 100% deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.
Poppy Seed Cakes, like the Czech “Makovec”. This is an extremely popular dessert often served on a cookie tray during the holidays, but it’s actually a moderately dense cake cut into 3-bite pieces. Recipes vary from a Yellow Cake base, to a White Cake base, oftentimes a Pound Cake base, and sometimes even an Angel Cake base; but cake it is. Fill that batter with an absurd amount of poppy seeds (whole and/or ground), and you’re pretty much done except for gilding-the-lily touches like a sharp lemon icing.
CONCLUSION
There are two types of people in the world: those who adore poppy seeds, and those who barely give them a second thought. That’s a pretty good average. People all over the world make cookies out of them too. But if you are a true devotee, the filling is where it’s at. This is the recipe that hooks ’em in and keeps ’em coming back.
Here’s a funny but true: we love our classic Lebkuchen recipe so much that we hesitated to work on this one out of pure loyalty. We’ve amassed a great number of honey gingerbread recipes (a/k/a “Honeycakes”), but Lebkuchen remains the a family favorite. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas if we left them off our tray.
It turned out to be a misplaced loyalty. Elisenlebkuchen bear very little resemblance to regular Lebkuchen when push comes to shove. Our old favorite is a classic built on a flour-based dough that’s jam packed with nuts, fruits, a bit of spice, and a whole lot of honey to act as the binder. Elisenlebkuchen have even more nuts, no flour at all, and instead rely on both honey and a full five (5!) eggs to act as the binder. They are two very different experiences.
On the Upper Left: chocolate glaze with sliced almonds. On The Upper Right: vanilla glaze with sliced almonds. On The Bottom: vanilla glaze only. Use whichever you think is prettiest.
NOTE FROM KATE: These cookies are horribly deceptive in their overall “goodness.” That is, with the exception of the brown sugar, they are a “whole food,” so what could go wrong, right? I’ll have to do a caloric breakdown one of these days. Let’s just say, they contain more energy than meets the eye. If you were riding across the mountains and had to choose a fabulous, long-lasting food source for the extra space in your saddle bags, these would be it. They remind me of Panforte in their composition, but have eggs for eggstra protein. [Insert eye roll from Scott] The good news? With eggstra protein and the good-for-you fat from the nuts, the sugar in the brown sugar and honey won’t hit your bloodstream too fast. A cookie or two could hold you for hours.
Best of all? Of all our cookies and especially waybreads, these are the closest to the Lembas the elves made famous in the Lord of the Rings. Toss in an apple, and you got yourself a balanced diet for the day! (Shh…don’t tell Scott!)
The recipe explains itself, and includes an extensive Cookie Nerd Moment with extra background material, so I will only take the time to discuss a few of the decision points you’ll face when trying this out on your own:
Should I use marzipan or ground nuts? It’s entirely up to you, and makes very little difference. Just remember that Marzipan has almost as much sugar as nuts (our recipe has a ratio of 4:5), and usually has some extra sweetness lurking in the background. If you make this substitution, do it by weight and assume the Marzipan is actually a 50/50 mix. You need to reduce the amount of both almonds and sugar accordingly.
Can I play with the spices? Of course you can! But we do recommend that you (a) stick to the basic, quite generous amount of overall spice, and (b) think of the spices as an accent to bring the best out of your chosen nuts.
Can I substitute in other nuts? Yes, but these are the classics used in Nuremberg. Be aware that you’ll be departing off road from the One True Tradition.
Should I glaze the cookies? Yes. That was easy enough. The glaze definitely enhances the overall look, especially since the bottoms are not glazed.
Should I use the vanilla glaze or the chocolate? Tradition allows for either one, so it’s entirely up to you. Both are thin enough to be only an accent flavor. This cookie is all about the nuts, and even I, a lifelong chocoholic, don’t want to mess with that purity.
Should I add the nut garnish on top? As you wish. They are only there for the sake of appearance and fair warning to anyone who sees them lying there on your tray.
Should I add the optional salt? And why specify “large grain” salt? This is a nontraditional option that we liked so much that we felt obliged to share. Both Kate and I have a strong preference for salted nuts over plain when we snack on them out of hand. The optional salt creates that effect in a light way. We recommend large grain salt sprinkled on top of the glaze because that is the best way to give a salty highlight. The base recipe also contains some salt, but that is more of a bare minimum that the cookie would suffer without.
That’s it folks. Enjoy!
Nuts, nuts, nuts, and fruit. The only other things inside this cookie are honey and eggs as the binder.
A recipe direct from the great-grandma of Czech cuisine
Kate grew up in Prague, which explains the Czech accent in so many of our recipes. This one is so utterly Czech that even native Praguers will be a little stunned. Not because of the recipe itself, though it really does make a fantastic, ultra-buttery thumbprint cookie with a unique technical twist. It’s the history that makes this cookie special.
The published recipe dates back to the landmark 1826 book by Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová (a/k/a M.D. Rettig), a name that every Czech knows, but also tends to discount. Non-natives may want to think of her as a much loved national Grandma; the old lady you treasure because she snuck you cookies, held you in her lap, and taught you how to handle pets, children, and husbands with a firm but loving hand. It’s an archetype, right?
But here’s the thing. Mrs. Rettigova has held that role in the cultural heart for 200 years and counting.
The key characteristics of a proper Thumbprint Cookie are:
An easygoing flavor that will pair with your jam based filling;
A tender, vaguely chewy, fine grained texture; and
Just enough structure to keep a clear dimple in the center when baked as a ball with a deep hole poked inside.
Mrs. Rettigova’s Dimple Cookies (“důlkové koláčky”) feature exactly the texture and structure you want, but also have a flavor that positively screams of BUTTER!!! Butter that pairs extremely well with fruit flavors of every kind, of course. Or can stand on its own.
The Key Trick: Combine Softened Butter With Clarified Butter
It’s a fairly simple procedure. (1) Beat a generous amount of softened butter with an equal amount of clarified or browned butter until smooth, (2) beat in egg yolks one at a time, and then (3) mix in the dry ingredients. All very simple, and totally brilliant.
Our article on Ghraybee, the Middle Eastern shortbread, details my years of frustration trying to incorporate browned butter into a shortbread cookie. The problem drove me mad, and I finally had to settle for simply using it as an icing. The delicate balancing act of Ghraybee offers one way around that diliemma. This cookie is the European solution I never managed to crack.
Yes, it’s also 200 years old and counting. [Sigh]. Don’t remind me. But look at this way: I’ve got a choice between feeling elated to have the answer, or ashamed that I didn’t think of it myself. Thanks all the same, but I’m going with Door #1.
THE ONLY QUESTION: NARROW HOLES OR WIDER HOLES?
There isn’t much else to add, since we’re offering the recipe basically unchanged from the original Czech. The only issue we found goes to personal choice. What’s the balance you want between cookie part and jam part? Here are the two options (you can also vote for “in between” of course):
Cookies made with a narrow hole by using only the width of a wooden spoon.
Cookies where the spoon hole was widened out before baking to the size of my (Scott’s) thumb.
The wider your holes before baking, the wider and shallower they will be after baking, with the initial difference enhanced by spreading. It really comes down to what you want. I am a jam-first kind of guy. Kate prefers a bit more balance.
(NOTE FROM KATE: I like the fruity notes of jam to pair with my shortbread without overwhelming it. In the past, I’ve removed excess jam out of an otherwise perfect cookie with a spoon. Psst…don’t tell on me.)
Then there is the final option: make a relatively flat topped cookie and then press a dimple in with your asbestos finger when they are hot out of the oven. Yes, it can give you a mild burn on a sensitive thumb tip. Sometimes you pay for beauty. And yes, you can use a tool like the blunt end of a small pestle; if you have one. Just be sure to act quickly! The cookies get delicate as they cool, at which point your effort to push in a dent will start to cause destruction instead.
P.S. These are cookies you fill after baking. Yes, you can do it in advance, but it serves no purpose. The jam condenses and shrinks as it bakes, while also losing its high notes. Here’s an example:
From the left, apricot filled after, apricot prefilled, strawberry prefilled, and strawberry filled after
I also believe those high notes matter, at least to my taste. Strawberry jam with a tiny hint of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar? Oh yeah. “How to elevate a childhood favorite into maturity in an instant.”
Apricot with a spice (cardamom!), herb (rosemary!), hint of booze (cognac!), or lemon? 1826, meet 2026. It has no end except the bounds of human creativity.
There are plenty of cookies where a cooked fruit filling is the right way to go, especially if you hope to ship them. This is a different critter. Thumbprints are for eating at home, not shipping out. Though nothing stops you from shipping them empty, of course. Even the most inept, kitchen-phobic bachelor can manage to fill a hole with a bit of his favorite jam!
So much for the actual cookie. Now it’s time for the treasure behind the cookie; an absolutely fascinating bit of history and perspective that most people tend to forget.
Again, head to the bottom if you only want the recipe. What follows is all about history, culture, and why you should go out of your way to give this one a try. It has nothing to do with the actual baking
WHO WAS M.D. RETTIGOVA AND WHY WAS SHE SO IMPORTANT?
(NOTE FROM KATE: Scott doesn’t waste a moment to learn something new from history, and this time period was of great interest to him in college.He’s also a professional storyteller, and thus can’t resist a good opportunity to share an interesting tale. Stories, however, are as important as they are interesting. They teach us much about who came before us, and they help shed light upon the things we do today without even thinking about it. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. For our Czech readers, you’ll note a non-Czech slant to Scott’s view of Czech history. Let’s treat pani Rettigova as one singular dot, and for this time, not worry about the seminal “details” that form the rest of the Czech history puzzle. Enjoy!)
Hmmm… Let’s start by setting the scene.The girl who would grow up to become Mrs. Rettigova was born in 1785 to a German speaking, very assimilated family named Artmann. They lived in a 500-person village located in the northern quarter of Imperial Austria that would later become the Czech Republic.
Austria in 1785 was the world of Mozart’s prime: a country heavy with tradition, and organized around an ancient, universally accepted, divinely inspired social order that began with the Emperor and moved on down. Loyalties were more medieval than modern. The ran to your patron, and from him on up to the imperial person. There were no amorphous concepts like a political state or ethnic group with the sole exception of religion, and the hellish wars of the 1600’s had left so deep a mark that smart people did their very best to avoid it. Citizenship and self image had precious little to do with a common language or a common history. Your “team” was your fellow imperial subjects, plain and simple.
(NOTE FROM KATE: this is what I mean about a non-Czech attitude. Those of us who grew up with Czech history will be saying, “But what about Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor and king of Bohemia? What about the Czech lords who elected their own king after the turmoil of the Hussite wars?” Not relevant. In Magdalena’s time, these events were esoteric and forgotten by all but literate historians. That’s the point. If a Czech person wanted to show how worldly and educated they were, they spoke and wrote in German.)
Recall too that Austria, a/k/a the Holy Roman Empire, had been one of Europe’s great powers since the fall of Rome, second only to France and at least the peer of Great Britain. Prussia and Sweden up north had famous armies too, while Spain was a declining but still great power in the far west, and the Ottoman Empire a historic menace to the south. Neither Germany nor Italy existed as a political unit, and no one but wild eyed, fantasizing academics bothered to dream about that kind of unification. They were mere “geographical expressions” as one of the era’s most famous politicians quipped later on.
That was the world this baby was born to enter. The first real stirrings of change occurred in 1792, when she was seven (7) years old. How can I bring home the enormous weight of what was coming down the historical turnpike? Let’s try this:
Imagine what life would be like for a girl in rural Ohio if Communist China suddenly threw off its chains and declared itself to be a new and radical democracy in the model of ancient Athens. That’s a pretty good analogy of what the French Revolution meant to people in the rural villages of central Europe. Or it would be if you could spice that impact up because the current queen and king of “China” happened to be the sister and brother-in-law of your own “President.”
These great events would have been a consuming topic of conversation for the grownups, but only a background noise for our little girl and her daily life. Seven year olds care more about playtime than the storm clouds of war on the horizon.
A few months later the deposed French king and queen tried to flee to Austria, and were recaptured. The revolutionaries had them beheaded in a public square just as she turned five. Monarchs fed to the same guillotine as common peasants! Shocking! But still just loud and urgent grownup talk from her perspective.
Her Emperor immediately declared war on France, Prussia joined in, her local “big kids” started to talk about military careers, and the atmosphere got ever more intense. Children her age would have been sent out of the kitchen, rather than assuming they’d just be bored.
The Reign of Terror began ran from ages 8-9 (the age of a typical American 3rd- to 4th-grader). While that went on, Austria and Prussia used the distraction to launch a joint invasion. It enjoyed enough initial success to make Great Britain and Spain join in for their fair share of the soon-to-be-carcass. Which meant that all of Europe had come together in a loose alliance against divided, self-consuming Revolutionary France. What else could happen but victory, soon and profound?
They all found out as she went the preschoolers started to see her as one of the Big Kids. France rallied enough to bounce the Prussians out of the war, though she managed no more than a desperate draw against Austria. The world went into 1794/95 (age 9-10) with the other Great Powers beginning to close their own nets. Victory still seemed inevitable, however stubborn the French mob had turned out to be. The war’s end, right there on the horizon… only to vanish with the rise of an unknown, undersized, provincial artillery officer who’d grown up on some tiny islet in the sea. Over the next half decade Napoleon Bonaparte took over the French command in Italy, proceeded to disgrace army after army, finally driving on to dethrone the Pope himself. Absolutely historic routs, which kept piling up until a final French triumph at the soul crushing Battle of Marengo in 1800. That year, Magdalena turned 15 and could start to be viewed as marriageable.
From here we can speed up a bit. Her Emperor and the victorious Napoleon declared an uneasy truce. Everyone knew it was more of an ‘armistice’ than a ‘peace,’ however, and so it proved. War renewed a few years later, only to end when she was 20, with Bonaparte’s legions sweeping across the continent to humble, humiliate, and crush the combined armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia. Every king but the Tsar was forced to surrender, and he would have too if Moscow wasn’t 1,200 miles (2,000 km) away from Vienna, off in the middle of nowhere.
(NOTE FROM KATE: it’s well-known that Napoleon’s armies looted a lot of art from Czech castles and churches. It is less known that they had absconded with half the nascent nation’s supply of vowels. This is why Czech has many words with only one vowel in them, and some with none at all! But look at French. They have so many, they can’t decide which ones to keep silent.)
Austria, along with everyone else, became a grudging vassal state, and the tide of revolutionary ideas began to flow from Paris unimpeded. The main treaties establishing a new world order were signed when Magdalena was 22 and 24, respectively. She married at the age of 23.
THE CHANGING LIFE OF THE NEW MAGDALENA D. RETTIGOVA
Magdalena wed an aspiring, politically active attorney named Jan Alois Sudiprav Rettig in 1808. The marriage, even now, seems to have been a love match as well as a deeply felt partnership. Jan had grown up in the same whirl of events as his new bride, and now grew entranced with the world of international thought.
Opponents gave credit for the French victories to Napoleon’s military genius, but the French themselves (including Napoleon) disagreed. They insisted that their true advantage came from the bottom up, not the top down; a hitherto unknown esprit de corps based on their common loyalty to la belle France et la révolution. This, they said, made even amateur French militiamen into better soldiers than any professional troops in service to old fashioned kings.
Intellectuals like Attorney Rettig called it “Nationalism,” and defined it as “loyalty to a nation and its ideals instead of a person.” One pictures the 25 year old Jan sitting in a cafe and pondering all these great events with like minded friends. “If there is a French people and nation, what is mine? It isn’t this defeated emperor of moribund Austria. Aha! My people date back to the great Slavic migrations of the Dark Ages. And who led those? King Lech, who began the people of Poland; his brother Rus, who created an empire from Estonia in the west, to Moscow in the east, and on down to the Ukraine; and finally King Czech, who created Bohemia and Moravia. That must be where I truly belong.”
(NOTE FROM KATE: This is really pushing my Czech buttons. Arrgh!)
Jan Rettig spent the rest of his life working for a renaissance of the old Czech culture, with the wholehearted support and assistance of his loving wife. They became the regional version of what we would call a Power Couple. It began at home, of course. Jan had grown up in a bilingual household. The couple now decided to speak only Czech within their walls. Magdalena learned this new-to-her language quickly, and from then on used her middle name Dobromila (literally “lover of good”) rather than the first name she’d gone by as a girl.
Her “M” period ended, and the “D” period began.
THE WORLD OF M. DOBROMILA RETTIGOVA TO AND AFTER THE FALL OF NAPOLEON
Napoleon’s reign finally came to a conclusive end half a decade later, with the 1815 Battle of Waterloo; an event that took place in the same year that M.D. Rettigova turned 30.
Stop and think about that. Her entire world, from the age of 7-30, had been formed during and by the political and social upheavals wrought by the French Revolution. The years of her childhood playing with dolls; the years of her adolescence; her marriage with a man she loved; and on into motherhood. (She eventually gave birth to 11 children, 3 of whom survived to adulthood).
The wars may have ended in 1815, but the Rettig family had been changed from its roots on up. The fall of France did precious little to weaken their devotion to the idea of a Czech People whose ancient roots predated any allegiance to the rulers of Austria.
Speaking of which… Austria came out of all this history as master of an enormous, polyglot empire more or less comparable to its possessions before the eruptions in France. Austria also wielded dominating international power due to the personal influence of its legendary chancellor, Klemens von Metternich. A man who soon proved to be one of the most brilliantly conservative, backward-looking minds the world has ever known.
(NOTE FROM KATE: While doing research for a book set in the Balkans, I learned that toward the end of WWI the former Yugoslavia was home to at least 33 languages, many of which are now considered dead.)
Metternich created, or at least to codified, the idea of a balance of power across the continent. Under his influence, the larger states agreed to join what he called the “Concert Of Europe”; an alliance aimed at maintaining the status quo. The events of France’s Revolutionary Era had lasted for a bit more than 20 years. Metternich’s repressive counter reaction would go on for more than 30.
[OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FUTURE: the “System of Metternich” inside of Austria persisted until a series of attempted revolutions in 1848. The Hungarians basically won in the east, causing the country to be renamed “Austria-Hungary” with the Emperor being titled as the king of two lands rather than a singular one. The Czech effort at independence failed, and they remained the Kingdom of Bohemia with the Emperor of Austria-Hungary being the automatic King; just as things had been since the Battle of Prague in 1621. Only WWI finally shattered the empire completely.
M.D. Rettigova died in 1845, so these pivotal events all took place after she was gone.]
With Napoleon exiled and Europe acting in concert, Metternich turned his attention to the nagging problem of stability inside the Empire. History shows that for all his flexibility when it came to tactics, there was an overarching principle: he wanted to erase the French Revolution, and turn the clock back to the world as it existed in 1791. Politically and socially. And Chancellor Metternich was willing to do anything – anything at all – to accomplish that goal. His army of secret police was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
You can see how much danger this created for a politically active, reform seeking couple like Mr. and Mrs. Rettig. But they were not the types to knuckle under. Mr. Rettig soldiered on, plotting with extreme caution behind the scenes. They could not oppose the political realities. Not with any hope of survival, let alone success. Thus most of his efforts would have turned toward building a groundwork for future changes. He and his fellow radicals began to promote things like academic study into the Czech language and history, promotion of Czech arts, research into Czech folklore, and education of the upcoming generations. Etc. Much the same sort of things, in fact, as the Grimm Brothers were doing in Germany, and others would soon be doing across the continent.
(NOTE FROM KATE: The Bible had been translated into Czech during the Hussite wars, and one of the concessions of the 1621 Hapsburg takeover had been the continuation of sermons in Czech as well as Latin. This made it much easier to resurrect the language that it would’ve been under other circumstances.)
Mrs. Rettigova? She established a school to teach young women “how to keep their husbands happy.” What could satisfy Herr Metternich more than a traditional focus like that? Not much, which is no doubt why the school survived even though the classes were taught in Czech (with German as a fallback), with materials written in Czech, recipes that dutifully used local Czech ingredients, and so on.
It was “soft power” at its finest, and it worked far better than any of the abortive political battles fought by her (no doubt very happy) husband and his friends.
Portrait by Jan Vilimek, 1860-1938. Such a nice, plump, harmless woman. Right? Riiiiight.
Notice those years? The artist painted this a full 40 years after M.D. Rettigova died. Her work carried that much cultural weight.
In 1826, at the age of 41, M.D. Rettigova published her Czech-language treatise “A Household Cookery Book,” which she revised and expanded over decades of later editions. That book served as an essential text for every Czech household in the century that followed, even though her specific advice grew ever more dated. There wasn’t even a remote competitor on the culinary side until the 1920’s, after the nation of Czechoslovakia had come into being, and the impossible dream achieved.
HERITAGE
Modern Czechs view Rettigova (largely known by that single name) as a sort of cartoon exemplar of a bygone and not-so-nostalgic age. “You can’t even use that book anymore! Every recipe starts with a pound of butter and half a dozen eggs. Who eats like that? And come on! ‘How to keep your man happy’? Really? Who wants to push that view of womanhood in the modern world? Haven’t we evolved a bit in the 193 years since she published? M.D. Rettigova was a lovely lady for her time, and my own great-Grandma mother swore by everything she wrote, but we need to look toward the future.”
I won’t disagree with any of that. Times really have changed, and I believe for the better. But I strongly disagree with waving a dismissive hand, and walking away after finishing that statement. It’s unfair, shortsighted, disrespectful, and just plain dumb.
Consider this: Your own beloved Grandma does not control your life. Nor should she. And you certainly wouldn’t agree with all her values and viewpoints, nor she with yours. But did she matter? Does she matter? You’re darned right she does! She and her equally old fashioned peers created the paper and ink you are using to write your own life. There’s no getting around it.
Think on it from this angle too. Are you old enough yet to be into your own parenting and grandparenting years? If so, I’d bet money that you occasionally stop and wonder if you are living up to Grandma’s example. It’s just the way we are.
CONCLUSION
Magdalena Dobromila Rettigova, born a solid quarter-century before Abraham Lincoln, has served as the national Grandma of the modern Czech nation for coming up on 200 years. It’s soft power, not hard. The stuff of homes and community centers more than parliament buildings and cathedrals. But it’s power nonetheless. Power right down at the core of Czech society. Power that has made, and continues to make a difference in hundreds of millions of lives.
She mattered, and mattered a lot. And this is one of her very best recipes. It doesn’t get more “heritage” than that.
Even if it does start out with the better part of a pound of butter and three large egg yolks.
The first of two articles on Poppy Seed Cookies. This one contains a roll-and-cut cookie (Queen Esther Cookies) and a drop Cookie (Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cookies)
Admission: poppy seeds are not my thing. They don’t offend me or anything, but my world would be no worse if poppy seed desserts simply disappeared. Kate? For Kate that would be a disaster on the same level as a plague to destroy the worldwide apple crop. My beloved wife adores poppy seeds, to the point where that’s one of her favorite bagels. [Shakes head].
NOTE FROM KATE: Poppy seeds! Oh my, they are…well…strangely addictive. I’ve loved them since childhood.
It turns out she’s not alone. Poppy seeds are one of those flavors that some people put at the very top of the food pyramid. My guess would be somewhere between one in five or one in ten based on recent conversations. Calling them “devoted” barely scratches the surface! And you know what? Almost everyone else is like me. We don’t dislike the flavor, it’s just the sort of thing we’re happy to leave to those who care.
Common? Check. Beloved by a lot of people? Check. A significant part of the culture from the Baltic States down through Turkey? Absolutely.
Sounds like the sort of thing we need to discuss.
But here’s the thing: poppy seeds are an ingredient more than a concept. They’re used in almost endless ways. So this article is going to focus sharply on cookies where poppy seeds are the central theme. I count four basic categories, plus a few that fall outside our scope:
Poppy seed roll-and-cut cookies, like the Queen Esther Cookies down below; and
Poppy seed drop cookies, like Poppy-Lemon Cookies.
Those are the subject of this article. Then there’s
Poppy Seed Filling;
Cookies made with Poppy Seed Filling, like Hamantaschen and Kolachy; and
Other beloved treats that cannot be called a “cookie”.
Those will get addressed in Part 2 of The Great Poppy Seed Adventure.
See that toasty bottom? It’s a secret key to getting these just…exactly…right. The bottoms add both texture and a flavor that neatly ties together the poppy seed and lemon elements.
I’m going to ignore the infinite versions that use poppy as an ingredient (Poppy Snaps, Lemon-Poppy Icings, etc.), and get to the meat of the question. What is the best fancy-looking cookie to make for friends and family who are [ahem] addicted to the flavor of poppy seeds?
The best answer we have found are Queen Esther Cookies, a treat from the Jewish tradition that’s often paired with Poppy Seed Hamantaschen.
It’s an easy cookie to make, and the development process was even easier because we started from a century-old family recipe. Not our family. This one comes from our online friend Carolyn, an estimable baker, who received it in turn from her grandmother. Here’s the original recipe for the sake of full disclosure and free giveaways:
Grandma made these for Purim, the Jewish early-spring holiday, and used margarine to avoid any potential issues with the kosher laws on a holiday. We have specified butter instead, and normalized the recipe to an even 2 sticks of butter. We also increased the amount of poppy seeds because, well, Kate. [NOTE: My beloved even wanted to try a full ½ cup! I put my foot down, but you might too if you fall in that camp.](NOTE FROM KATE: It would’ve worked. While experimenting with a Lithuanian recipe, I baked up cookies the color of asphalt. Yum! Usually, we give away our trial runs. Not this time-these are bagged in the freezer for “emergencies.”)
Two flavor notes: First, we found over and over again that the best cookies were the ones with the browner bottoms. That little bit of toastiness enhanced both the lemon and the poppy seed flavors.
We also choose to go with baking powder instead of soda, because we enjoyed the bright hit of lemon as a counterpoint to the cookie. If you want it more restrained (and Carolyn did say the lemon flavor should be subtle), try using baking soda instead. It’s an easy 3:1 conversion; exchange ½ tsp. baking soda for the designated 1½ tsp. baking powder. That will remove some of the extra acid from the lemon juice? [N.B. You can make baking powder at home by using two parts cream of tartar to one part baking soda. Thus baking soda makes up one-third of the designated 1½ teaspoons of powder; or to put it another way, is 3x as strong]
As you might expect, the recipe was nigh unto perfect. We did play around a bit, and found that the standard creaming method in a mixer works as well as cutting the butter in with a food processor. Does it work as well as doing it by hand? Try it and let us know. We are children of the machine age.
We also tested ground poppy seeds versus whole. The first has slightly more flavor and is a lot less gritty, but makes for a gray cookie with darker specks. The whole seeds make a vastly more attractive cookie that’s black-on-pale, but you do end up with seeds between the teeth. I’d go with the whole because I’m not eating them anyway, but She Who Snarfs [Ow! That hurt!] thinks it is a much closer call. (NOTE FROM KATE: I won’t kick whole-poppy seed cookies out of bed, but I prefer the more developed bitter edge of ground seeds. They may look a bit modern and abstract, but the flavor is superb. Also, there’s no danger of getting seeds stuck between your teeth.)
So that’s the first. Queen Esther’s Roll and Cut Poppy Seed Cookies. Check.
POPPY SEED DROP COOKIES
For good or ill, this is a cookie where I had to get a bit creative. We had just finished developing our version of the roll-and-cut Queen Esther cookies, and wanted to do a parallel, poppy-heavy drop cookie. Online recipes are all over the place; cutting back on the amount of flour would have been too easy; and I wanted to use the basic Queen Esther flavor balance while creating something with a very different, more pillow-like texture. So I started by noodling around in the world of online drop cookie formulae until I happened across a recipe for Sour Cream Cookies. Aha!
We haven’t written that recipe up because they’re heartlessly plain, and aren’t common enough to demand a spot on the list. But I have baked them, and knew they would perfectly match the target texture. Besides that, the flavor of sour cream would enhance both the lemon and the poppy flavor, while shifting the focus just sideways enough to really distinguish them from the roll-and-bake recipe. So I set to work, did a sample batch, and [Insert Proud Daddy Preening].
It’s a similar lemon-poppy flavor profile, but with sour cream as well to broaden the edges. Note the toasty bottom. Same thing here as with the Queen Esther cookies. We liked them distinctly better when the bottoms were properly browned. Our dark cookie sheet worked significantly better than the lighter one in this regard.
Are you a married man? If so, you know that moment when your wife gets that look of surprised, big-eyed delight, and then looks at you with pride and admiration. It’s rare. It’s precious. And I got just such a look when my beloved gave the test run a sample. “OMG Scott. You’re goooood. [Munch, munch, reach].”
I don’t know what else to tell you. Is it a “heritage” recipe? Debatable. The two halves are, but the combination is original. But as they say in Paris, c’est la vie. And who cares? They’re goooood!
NOTE FROM KATE: Unlike the Queen Esther cookies, which soften in the tin, the drop cookies tend to harden overnight. Adding a slice of bread in the morning restored them by mid afternoon.
NOTE: We haven’t tried it, but this should be a cookie where you can replace the actual poppy seeds with a commercial poppy seed filling. Our homemade filling (see below) is somewhere close to 65% poppy seed, 20% milk, and 15% sweetener if you measure by volume. Assuming a comparable proportion in the canned versions… [click, click, click]… the math says one should get an almost identical product by replacing the ⅓ cup of poppy seeds with ½ cup of filling, and then reducing both the sour cream and the sugar by 2 tbsp. each. It won’t be perfect (experiments never are), but it should be close enough for the second batch to be just about right if you keep good notes.
CONCLUSION
So much for Part 1 of our poppy seed adventure. Part 2 will cover the tips, tricks, and secrets to making the world’s best Poppy Seed Filling, along with a couple of sample recipes for how to use it, and some discussion of the poppy desserts world beyond just cookies.
Spectacular eastern European mushroom cookies made with a stove top mold
Kate and I are avid foragers who spend a lot of time in the woods hunting for local chanterelles, morels, boletes, maitake, and other species. We do okay.
Kate, the porcini hoard, and tonight’s risotto dinner-in-waitingDown boy! Even edulis is better when cooked. This is the 4-5 gallons (15-20 liters) we draw down each year for gifts.
Every September the local mushroom club hosts a large foray that features a gigantic set of potluck meals supplied by the different members. What did we contribute for 2022? What do you think?
LEFT: poppy seed mushrooms. UPPER LEFT: scottish shortbread leaves. LEFT CENTER: caramel, raspberry, and butterscotch gribochky. CENTER: faux button mushroom caps. BOTTOM: roll and cut mushrooms. RIGHT: laskonky (walnut meringue) mushroom caps. UPPER RIGHT: The insane display made with structural gingerbread trees, poured sugar backdrop, Marshmallo Crispy treat landscape and gingerbread crumb dirt, and two large meringue Lepiotas (or Amanitas, as you wish). NOTE FROM KATE: Oh, definitely Lepiotas!
This article covers our experiments with Gribochky, those colorful little mushroom gems you can see scattered around the display and piled on the bright blue plate. Time permitting, we’ll do another on the other ways to create faux-mushroom illusion cookies. It takes a little fussing, but they’re great fun for baker and eater alike once you get them finished.
We purchased this specialty mold online. It’s the same company that made our walnut (oreshki) molds
Put a small ball of dough in each hole, close, and then cook on the stovetop until done. Both sides of course.
Gribochky is a slavic word that means “mushrooms”, just as the very similar Oreshki means “nuts.” Both are made from a dough so soft that it could even be called a super-thick batter, and both use a unique stovetop mold as shown above. But where Oreshki come out as stamped halves waiting to be filled with a rich and milky caramel, Gribochky come out as solid, 3-dimensional pieces waiting to be decorated. That’s the point when they turn special.
Amp Up The Flavor. We know at least one excellent baker who tried to make Gribochky and came away disappointed. We can’t blame her. The online recipes, which are very similar, produce a cookie so plain that it isn’t worth eating. Boooooring. We solved that by treating the base recipe as a platform rather than an end point. It worked like a charm.
We made two versions for the foray and both came out great. The first had a 1.2 oz package of freeze dried raspberries (crushed into fine dust), with an extra tablespoon or two of butter/other fat for moisture. Delicious, and a perfect way to mimic the sour tang of candy apple boletes that grow under out local oaks. The second included a tablespoon of our Pardubice honey-gingerbread spice mix. Just as good in a totally different way. And it was obvious that any comparable ‘fix’ would have worked just as well. From “yawwwwwn” to “how interesting…” in one easy step! And it’s a step you can take in any direction that suits the spices in your cabinet, the extracts in your drawer, the freeze dried fruit in your local market, and the whims in your heart.
Trust In Tradition. Many will be surprised to see sour cream or mayonnaise listed as an ingredient. Don’t be. It’s quite common in Eastern European recipes, adds tenderness, and provides a certain complicated je ne sais quoi. I may well try some Greek yogurt for our next batch.
Shorten The Flour By A Lot. Those who know us may be surprised to see such a healthy amount of cornstarch. The reason comes down to simple physics. Gribochky would be amazingly thick if treated as a regular cookie, and the gluten from pure flour would make them prohibitively tough. The starch backs that down into plain old crunchy. Yes, we usually prefer to use rice, tapioca, or potato starch. They avoid the danger of a pasty aftertaste, which can happen when you use cornstarch in flat cookies because it breaks down at a higher temperature than the others. The internal temperature of Gribochky gets high enough to remove that fear. Use whatever starch is cheap and convenient.
Cooking Time Varies. The stove top time varies with burner size, flame height, how often you flip, how often you turn, the underlying color of the dough, and probably the moods of your local household gremlin. Heck, sometimes you want a better cooked specimen, and sometimes a blonder one, so the target changes too. The only universal guidelines I can provide are these:
We never got the cookies done in less than 4-5 minutes (2-2½ minutes per side), and usually wanted to add a little bit of time after peeking inside to check for doneness.
It helps to make regular turns to change the angle, which avoids hot spots caused by an uneven flame.
It also helps to flip them over as they cook in order to to equalize the cooking on both sides. Look closely at the photos and you’ll see one batch that looks a little odd because I cooked them first on Side A, and then on Side B. The first side cooked more, leaving a distinct stripe. No one will notice a thing like that in the decorated cookies unless you point it out, but we knew, and so it nettled.
NOTE FROM KATE: I found that preheating the mold gets too heat-dangerous and fussy for me. I made as many balls as we had holes to fill, and rolled them into a conical shape. I placed the wide part of the cone into the cap of the mold in each cavity (both sides, please!) The mold was warm but not too hot, so I could use my fingers to push the dough all the way in. I closed the mold and popped it over the flame. Time it, flip it, go again, and repeat until done. The lack of preheating doesn’t hurt the cookie (you can vary the time or the flame height) and it avoids “casualties.” Also, you don’t burn your fingertips!
DECORATIONS; a/k/a TURNING ON THE MAGIC
There are four parts you can pay attention to on each cookie: (1) the cap, (2) the base, (3) the stem, and (4) the pore/gill layer. The first two matter most, but you can certainly gild the lily by playing with #’s 3 and 4 as well.
Decorating The Caps: We’ve tested two basic techniques for the cap coating. Both worked, and playing with either approach yields a vast number of options. It’s a no lose situation.
The first method centers on melted chocolate. Dark, milk, white, food-dyed-white, and even commercial candy melts – each and every one of them will work. We like to thin them out with a bit of cream, but your mileage may vary.
The best approach is to hold each piece by the stem, dip it into the coating at an angle, and then roll the cookie to cover the entire surface of the cap. Remove, let the excess drip off, and then set them cap up in a place where they can dry without flattening one part of your coating. Egg cartons worked great, with ice cube trays a very close second.
Dark chocolate, textured by accident because I melted it without any cream, cocoa butter, or other fat to make it thinner and smoother. I love the contrast created by painting the “pores” bright yellow.
We also tested chocolate chips, but they didn’t work nearly as well. Chips are carefully designed to not melt, and overcoming that is like fighting the tide. First you must add cream to help them melt evenly. Then you find that they harden, curdle, and/or to harden in inconvenient ways despite the cream. And then they’ll suddenly discolor if you try to keep them warm on the stove top. I can’t recommend chips except for something odd like butterscotch chips, which do double duty as a coating and a unique flavor addition.
NOTE FROM KATE: instead of cream, I prefer using cocoa butter melts. They help your chips or chocolate melt, loosening the mix and helping with dipping properties, but they also yield in a nice and solid surface with none of the tackiness that cream can cause. We winged it with the chips here. For exact instructions, kindly refer to our “Chocolate coverture” recipes associated with chocolate-dipped marshmallow treats.
Butterscotch chips for the cap. It was a PITA but we made it work! White chocolate base, with poppy seed dirt. BTW… did you notice the stripe on the left hand cookie? That’s the one where I forgot to flip them as I cooked.
Butterscotch chips cooked into a dark caramel. Still usable and edible, but it came at the cost of frayed tempers and a few choice words that cannot be shared in public. They looked pretty good anyway, and could have been great if we had enough time and energy to paint the underside of the cap.
The other cap technique uses molten sugar. The prettiest of them all is a candy apple coating made from “hard crack” sugar syrup mixed with some bright red food dye. Your target is 300°-310° F (149°-154° C). Caramel works well for light and dark browns.
The problem here comes down to safety. 310° sugar syrup can burn you badly enough to leave obvious scars. No bueno. We came up with a workaround, but it requires three hands. Hand #1 steadies the pot. Hand #2 holds the cookie stem in a pair of tongs, dips it into the hot syrup, rolls it around to get even coverage, and then lets the excess drip back into the pot. Hand #3 then takes the cookie out of the tongs with a pair of chopsticks, inverts it, and lays it out in an ice cube tray (cap up) to dry. NOTE: The sugar is so hot and so sticky that it will melt a styrofoam egg carton, and pull off shreds of a cardboard one. Yes, the cardboard easily peels away from the cooled cookie, but better to avoid the issue in the first place. NOTE FROM KATE: peel cardboard bits off the sugar with fingers, then moisten a small brush and work the surface over a bit. When in doubt, remember that you are making the cookies healthier by incorporating an extra microdose of fiber!
The upside? Behold!
Candy Apple Gribochky
Gotcha! These aren’t cookies. They are the real life Candy Apple Bolete, Exsudoporus frostii. Nature’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
Decorating the Base: This step is easier because there aren’t many options, all of them are easy, and the shape can be handled with fingers alone. Did you know that mushrooms are actually the fruit of the fungus and not the main entity? The apple of the tree? ‘Struth! The main body is called “mycelium” and will be spread in a mat over a relatively vast area in and around the soil or the nearby wood. This is what you’re seeing at the bottom of mushrooms poked fresh out of the ground.
Mycelium is almost always some shade of white or pale yellow, and is easy to replicate with white chocolate or a tinted candy melt. Add poppy seeds or cookie crumbs for “dirt” and presto! Your illusion is complete on both top and bottom.
The Underside Of The Cap: Mushrooms with this shape will have either gills or pores on the underside of the cap. Adding this layer is a special touch that true mushroom geeks will appreciate, but it’s very hard to see unless you make it a bright, contrasting color like the yellow-on-dark specimen up above.
Gills can be any color of the rainbow, but most people will want to make them white, pink, or cocoa brown to imitate the best known species. Lilac will make the mushroom hunters happy. Mushroom pores will be white, yellow, pink, or red at this spot in the vast majority of cases, sometimes with blue or brown bruising on the surface.
Decorating the Stem. Stem features, ironically enough, are often the most useful part of a mushroom for field identification. For Gribochky? They’re an afterthought, because the features are impossibly subtle to duplicate. The only time it’s worth an effort is something along the lines of painting/dipping the stem to make it white, and that only makes sense when you’re trying to model an Amanita or Agaricus (see below). OTOH, adding berries or food dye to the actual dough can be a fantastic trick for species like the red Candy Apple Boletes. That, and cooking the Gribochky to a lighter or darker shade of brown, is almost always enough to complete a high quality illusion.
A Few Common Mushrooms To Mimic.
The so-called “toadstools” with white spots on top are in the genus Amanita. These can have caps ranging from bone white through basically any color, have white gills, almost always have a white stem with a ring of extra tissue about 2/3 of the way up.
Supermarket button mushrooms are in the genus Agaricus. They have white caps with white stems, and gills that start off pink before aging into brown. These will also have a ring on the stipe. Oh! And the answer is “yes.” Store bought mushrooms are all the same species, Agaricus bisporus. The little buttons are babies, cremini are teenagers, and portabellas are full sized grownups.
White chocolate “agaricus” with chocolate “gills.” This was our very first effort, and the illusion is as poor as any version you’ll ever made. And it doesn’t exactly suck even so, does it? Gribochky are show stoppers, plain and simple.
The pored mushrooms, a/k/a boletes, are my personal specialty and it pains me intensely to mention some but not others. You can find a list of every North American species at The Bolete Filter, written by yours truly under a different hat. The true “porcini,” a/k/a Boletus edulis and its close cousins, will have a yellow, orange, light red, or light brown cap with a white or yellow pore surface.
CONCLUSION
Gribochky are a perfectly acceptable eating cookie once you kick up the flavor with berries or spices, in the same way as Vanilla Snaps and the like, but their real glory lies in the illusion. There are other techniques one can use to create the illusion of a mushroom out of different kinds of cookies. They work too, particularly as part of a scene. But none allow for this level of absurd creativity, let alone the chance to customize things toward a copy of real life species. Fun, fun, fun!
Yes, the cookies require a special mold, and can definitely qualify as “fussy” on the decorations side if you try to copy real life. But the results can be shockingly beautiful, especially if you take the relatively easy step of dipping the bottom to mimic the mycelium, and then adding in poppy seeds or cookie crumbs to mimic the dirt. They start at “Cool!” and work their way up to “Spectacular.”
If pure, visual fun is your thing – or mushrooms! – this is a cookie that needs to be in your repertoire.
Raspberry candy apple, dark caramel-spice, and butterscotch-spice Gribochky
Part 1 of a 5-part series about those chocolate coated treats you adored as a child. This is the overview.
This is by far the most challenging recipe we’ve undertaken even though the basic instructions for all of the 73,000 variations could not be simpler:
Make a simple, basic cookie base.
Make a marshmallow filling and pipe it on top of the base.
Cover with a thin coat of snappy chocolate.
Easy, right?
Well, maybe the cookie part… until you account for the infinite variations and my obsessive need to test each and every one. But that’s just volume of work, not difficulty, and I can sum it up quickly. (A) any plain cookie of the proper size will work, and we took great delight in playing around. It’s almost shocking at how big a difference you can create by shifting to a cardamom, cinnamon, or gingerbread flavored base in lieu of the classic Vanilla or Graham Wafer. (2) Straightforward shortbreads like your favorite butter cookie will also work. But (3) It is vital to keep the intensity under control, so the base to be a partner in the enterprise, and not a dominator. If you’re starting from a standard spice cookie (a/k/a “snap”), cut the amount of featured flavor in half.
The marshmallow fillings posed a bigger problem. We are bakers, not candy makers, which created a learning curve issue before we could start narrowing down toward the perfect version. I discovered there are two basic approaches to making a homemade marshmallow: the U.S. gelatin-only version, and the European Italian-meringue version. Both recipes work… if you want to make a marshmallow to eat out of hand. They emphatically do not work when you’re after an ultra-light, not too sweet marshmallow filling!
The solution came down to food chemistry in action, as discussed in this online grade school experiment. All marshmallows have a certain proportion of corn syrup (glucose) in addition to regular sugar (sucrose). They must, because at these concentrations you need to combine the two sweeteners in order to prevent crystallization. If you do the experiment, you’ll learn that a higher percentage of corn syrup yields a fluffier but less sweet product. Ding ding! That was exactly what I wanted! The two marshmallow fillings have different proportions, but raising the level of glucose pretty much solved the problem. More than solved. Taste testers actually stopped to ask, “how did you get this texture?”
Then came the third kind of marshmallow… but that’s the tale of Part 5.
The chocolate coatings drove poor Kate nigh unto madness. [NOTE FROM KATE: Ahem! “To a level of high frustration.” Husbands.] Here’s the problem in a nutshell: you’re trying to duplicate cheap, commercial, pseudo-chocolate shells using quality products in a homemade environment. So how the devil could you create that thin, snappy shell at room temperature without all the apparatus of industry?
Back to the food chemistry research I went, where I discovered that the answer lies in the kind of fat you use to thin out the chocolate. Think of it this way. You’re really trying to create a version of the “magic shell” liquid used to coat ice cream. That is nothing more than melted chocolate thinned with coconut oil. It works because the cold ice cream hardens the oil to create a shell. Leave your finger on that shell, and the spot you’re touching will turn soft and gooey because the heat of your body is higher than the melting point of coconut oil.
What we needed for Chocolate Marshmallow treats was a fat that would harden/soften at body temperature rather than room temperature. Industry uses palm oil, which does just that and is also cheap. But palm oil is evil. The combination of slave labor and environmental havoc behind that industry means that we won’t have anything to do with it. Palm oil was out. Cocoa butter was in.
For what it’s worth, our taste runs toward a classic dark chocolate coating, but white and milk versions will also work, and sprinkles, sparkles, or stripes, ground nuts, espresso powder, & etc. could be used to guild the lily. Oh yes! You can also flavor the chocolate with a touch of coffee or liqueur.
Permutations Multiplied By Possibilities; And Again; and Again; and Again.
Look at the options we had at this point in time. Start with cookie bases limited only by your imagination; multiply by two marshmallow fillings that can be piped in any shape; multiply again by literally any extract buried away in your spice cabinet; multiply a fourth time all the different forms of chocolate; multiply a final time for the ways you can flavor that chocolate; and then consider all the ways you could decorate those final products.
You could fill an entire bakery with that many variations, and still have ones you left out. Macarons 2.0, done and ready to publish. Right? Not exactly. It turns out there is a third kind of marshmallow, which will blow your mind unless you grew up in Eastern Europe.
Zefir, named after the gentle southern wind,is a marshmallow that starts from a base of concentrated fruit. But that doesn’t do it justice. They don’t taste of “fruit” so much as FRUIT!!!! The level of pure flavor is almost hard to believe, especially when you factor in the distinctly sour tang that no extract could even begin to imitate. It’s like nothing else we’ve ever come across.
Zefir are usually sold on their own, with neither a cookie base nor a chocolate coating. But both variations exist on store shelves in every country from Poland and the Czech Republic eastward into Central Asia, and no study centered on marshmallow fillings would be complete without at least mentioning Zefir as a potential variation.
Alas, but Zefir are also a maddening puzzle we still haven’t cracked! The basic method could be the simplest one of all, and it has worked spectacularly for both sour apple and raspberry versions. But it’s also failed completely with some other fruits, and we’ve yet to understand why. So part five of this series is a work in progress. We can promise results for the apple and raspberry versions, but things get inconsistent after that.
CONCLUSION
Macarons are a very elegant, grownup treat. Chocolate Marshmallow Treats make your inner child jump up and down like a vibrating six year old. But the two cookies share something in common: they can be made in endless, high-end variations that deserve to be tucked into elegant little boxes for a nifty markup. If you’re a bakery owner, take me at my word and do a few “Why not?” experiments of your own. It could be the start a whole new trend, and it’s as simple as 1, 2, 3:
Cookie Base, flavored with anything you want;
Marshmallow Filling, flavored with anything you want; and
Chocolate coating, flavored with anything you want, and decorated as you desire.
It took us forever to get each of those pieces capital-R Right, but none of them is hard on its own once you have the recipe. So don’t be daunted! People across the world will bow at your feet once you master the simple tricks that let you make these for gifts, parties, and sales. Wait a sec… Let me lodge the protest on your behalf:
“Across the world?” Come on Scott. Why the exaggeration? We all know this treat from childhood. It’s hardly the sort of thing that would make people all over the world go wild!
