Saturday, December 6, 2008

Christmas cookies

It's time to get started, seriously. December 6th and no single christmas cookie baked yet? Unbelievable...

But, here we go, the first badge of cookies, quite a selection of quickly whipped up little critters that will disappear in no time, but remind me on how easy it is to make these things, if you're simpleminded like I am.. :)
There they are:
- chocolate cookies ("Schokoladen Prasselplaetzchen"), some covered in hazelnuts, some in sugar
The recipe is from a Chocolate cookbook from teh Bechtermuenz Verlag: melt 200g dark chocolate with 90g butter, add 115g sugar and vanilla, beat in 3 eggs, and then add 200 g flour with 1/2 tea spoon baking powder, and a little salt. They ask for 25 cocoa powder as well, which I did not add. Let the dough sit cold for a bit before you form it into little balls, roll them in ground hazelnuts, or powder sugar, and then bake them for 10-15 minutes at 160 deg C (320 deg F).

- hazelnut macaroons
I had some leftover eggwhite, added sugar and hazelnuts, and baked it at 400 deg F for about 10 minutes.

- coconut cookies
These are not quite macaroons because there's egg yolk in them - that's why they are so yellow. Temperature is about the same as for the hazelnut macaroons.

- Spekulatius cookies
These are based on flour, baking powder, sugar, egg, a little heavy cream, and, spekulatius spice, which contains cinnamon, orange and lemon peel, cardamom, cloves, coriander and nutmeg.

Spekulatius is actually a traditional central european christmas cookie, which is entirely different from what I made here - I just threw somewhat randomly things together that result in something with a good taste and a cookie appearance, and coincidentally I had Spekulatius spice to add to the mix :-)
But here's how real Spekulatius looks like:
Check out this recipe for Spekulatius (supposedly belgian, but they are very similar in Germany), a little more work than I was willing to put in today.. but well worth it!

Happy Nikolaus-Day!

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