Recipes

Springerle

General Directions for Printing Cookies

Cream Cheese Butter Cookies

Edible Chocolate Modeling Clay

Edible Peanut Butter Playdough

Salt Dough

Speculaas or Spekulaitus

Gluten-Free Springerle

Vanilla Sugar Cookie

"Golden Nut" Filled Cookies

Cream Cheese Butter Cookies

Flavor Variations
Replace lemon with: 1 teas. Vanilla and ½ teaspoon nutmeg or 1 teas. Vanilla and 1 teas. cinnamon

Sift together flour and salt. Cream butter and cream cheese together. Gradually add sugar and mix well. Beat in egg yolk and flavoring. Chill dough well - at least 4 hours, overnight is best.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll dough on floured surface ¼ inch thick. Flour cookie mold. Imprint, cut cookies and place on cookie sheet. Repeat.

Bake 10 - 12 minutes till cookies are light brown around the edges. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Cool completely and store in airtight containers.

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Edible Chocolate Modeling Clay

Directions:

Place the chocolate in a medium bowl in a saucepan that contains hot, but not boiling, water. Make sure the water doesn't touch the bowl's bottom.

Melt the chocolate, making sure that its temperature doesn't go over 100 degrees.

Add the corn syrup. Stir with rubber spatula, folding and mixing until no shiny syrup is visible. Turn the clay out onto a sheet of wax paper.

Dust molds well with cocoa. Push chocolate into mold, using edge of spatula to scrape chocolate flat across top of mold. Carefully tap mold to release chocolate. Let stand at room temperature about 2 hours, or until firm.

Use at once, or store in an air-tight container at room temperature up to one month.

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Edible Peanut Butter Playdough

Mix all ingredients except sugar; add sugar a little at a time.

Knead until smooth and doesn't stick to hands.

Dust molds with confectioner's sugar.

Press fondant into molds and scrape excess with dull side of knife. Carefully unmold fondant.

Store fondant in refrigerator.

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Salt Dough

Mix flour and salt together, then add water and oil, kneading 5 - 10 minutes till smooth. If too wet, knead in more flour; if too dry, add a bit more water. Wrap with plastic wrap and let set at room temperature at least 1-2 hours. Letting it set for a day or even longer allows the salt to partially dissolve, making a smoother dough.

Shape into ornaments as desired, poking holes with a toothpick or plastic straw to allow for hanging. Air dry or bake in oven at lowest temperature. Paint with acrylic or watercolor paints. If desired, dip or spray with glaze. String with ribbon or gold thread to hang.

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Perfection Springerle Cookies

These whisked-egg holiday cookies date back to at least the 1600's and are made in Bavaria, Switzerland and the Alsace area of France. For eating quality, ease and quality of prints this recipe is just perfection!

Dissolve hartshorn in milk and set aside. Beat eggs till thick and lemon-colored (10-20 minutes). Slowly beat in the powdered sugar, then the softened butter. Add the hartshorn and milk, salt, preferred flavoring, and grated rind of lemon or orange, if desired. Gradually beat in as much flour as you can with the mixer, then stir in the remainder of the 2 lbs. of flour to make stiff dough. Turn onto floured surface and knead in enough flour to make a good print without sticking. Follow general directions for imprinting and drying cookies.

Bake on greased or baker's parchment-lined cookie sheets at 255° to 325° till barely golden on the bottom, 10-15 minutes or more, depending on size of cookie.

Store in airtight containers or in zipper bags in the freezer. They keep for months, and improve with age. Yield 3 to 12 dozen.

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Speculaas or Spekulaitus

A holiday tradition in Holland ("windmill cookies"), Belgium, Northern Germany, and Scandanavia. They can printed with Springerle molds that are of a low and even depth.

Cream butter and brown sugar together; add egg, almonds, then salt and flavor ingredients, and finally work in flour. Add 4-6 tablespoons milk to make a stiff dough. Refrigerate 30-60 minutes. Roll, print and cut out as in general directions, or if you have Speculaas molds - prepare by spraying with non-stick spray or oiling and wiping off excess (done once for the whole batch).

Flour molds (for every use), knocking out excess. Press dough into mold, then cut excess dough off flush with back of mold with a wire or knife. Unmold carefully onto greased or parchment-lined baking sheet which is sprinkled with the shaved almonds. Brush with milk. No drying is needed before baking.

Bake at 350 degress for 10-12 minutes. Yield 30-90 cookies depending on size.

* Note: if you seem to have some "fading" of pattern during baking try chilling the molded cookies a few minutes before baking.

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General Directions for Printing Cookies

Size and liquidity of eggs, flour, and weather can affect your dough. Use your senses to decide if the dough will print well without sticking. You may need to use less or more flour than the recipe states.

To Prevent Sticking

Method #1
Brush confectioner's sugar or flour (use flour for cookies and confectioner's sugar for candy) over mold with a clean, dry pastry brush to prevent sticking.

Method #2
In some instances you may prefer to spray mold with non-stick spray or lightly coat with cooking oil (wiping with a paper towel); for example, to avoid a "floury" look on dark gingerbread, fondant or marzipan. Do not grease and flour molds, as flour plugs the details.

Printing Cookies

Method #1 - For most cookies...
Dough will be rolled approximately 1/4" to 3/8" thick, like pie crust (deeper molds need thicker dough). Brush confectioner's sugar or flour on the mold image, then imprint with your press (mold), cut out shape with knife or pastry wheel, dry and bake. Remember to "press and cut, press and cut" so that adjacent images are not distorted.

Method #2 - For very deep or large cookies...
Roll out dough to desired thickness and, using a dry, clean pastry brush, apply flour or sugar and cut a piece of dough the approximate size needed for the mold. Press dough into the mold with fingers, working from center outward. You may lightly roll the back side of the cookie to smooth before turning out of the mold. Trim, dry and bake. To check your print, use light from the side - daylight or light from a floor lamp - so the shadows let you see if your prints are good.

Drying

Most printed cookies are dried 2-24 hours before baking (depending on your schedule, humidity, etc.) Drying preserves the image during baking.

Test bake one cookie first! It saves grief!

Baking Temperatures

Ovens vary widely! If your test cookie "over puffs" or tilts, reduce heat, put an empty cookie sheet on bottom oven shelf, or prop the oven door slightly ajar with handle of a wooden spoon to wick off heat. For tiny cookies, you may need the temperature set as low as 200 degrees. In general, the smaller the cookie, the lower the temperature. The larger the cookie the higher the temperature.

Bubbles

Flat areas of larger cookies are vulnerable to "bubbles" while baking. Simply press then down manually and finish baking.

Hartshorn (Ammonium Carbonate or Baker's Ammonia)

Hartshorn is an old-time leavening unexcelled for any cookies and produces an especially light, delicate texture. Hartshorn can be substituted for baking powder proportionately one-to-one in cookie or cracker recipes. Hartshorn is not affected by age, but it will evaporate. Doughs made with hartshorn store well, as its leavening action is only triggered by heat, not moisture. There will be an ammonia smell during baking, but it will be baked out of your cookies. (It used to come in a form like rock salt, so old recipes instructed "crush with a rolling pin" then dissolve in liquid.) Purchase Hartshorn.

Flavoring Oils

Don't be alarmed if the flavoring oils crystallize or congeal. Place the bottle in warm water until it is liquefied and shake. Purchase Flavoring Oils.

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Gluten-Free Springerle

By Cindy Kunzler
Adapted from House on the Hill’s ‘Nini’s Perfection’ Springerle

1. Dissolve hartshorn in milk and set aside for 30-60 minutes.

2. Beat eggs until thick and lemon-colored (10-20 minutes).

3. Slowly beat in the confectioner’s sugar, then the softened butter.

4. Add the hartshorn and milk, salt, preferred flavoring (and zest if using), and Xanthan gum.

5. Gradually beat in as much of the Flour Blend as you can with the mixer (switch to a dough hook if using a Kitchenaid), then stir in the remainder of the 7 cups Flour Blend. You’ll need to eyeball this part; depending on which types of gluten-free flours you use in your Blend, it may take more or less. Nevertheless, the dough will need to be fairly stiff – although not dry – in order to ‘take’ the print of the cookie mould(s).

6. With a pastry brush, lightly dust the springerle mould with Flour Blend. It is recommended to dust the mould each time.

7. Take about ½ c. of dough (more or less, depends upon the diameter of your springerle mould) and roll into a ball (you will want to dust your hands first). Press the ball into the center of the dusted mould and lightly press outwards to the edge of the mould. Take a small piece of waxed paper, place it over the dough and gently roll your rolling pin over the waxed paper to make the cookie’s depth even. Very gently, begin to peel the cookie away from the mould and place 1 ½” apart on parchment-paper-lined cookie sheets. If using the large Paschal Lamb mould (5” diameter), you might fit 3 cookies per sheet. My experiment proved that rolling this dough is nearly impossible due to its incredible stickiness! (Perhaps use more Flour Blend?)

8. Dry the cookies on the sheet overnight or for several hours. My experiment also proved that, as with wheat-based flour, the cookies do need to dry several hours or else the image will distort, rise too much and crack.

9. Bake for about 15 minutes at 275º, or until very lightly golden on the bottoms. This is a ballpark time and temperature, depends on the size of the cookies! Yet if underbaked, the cookies will fall apart while transferring them to the cooling rack. Test-bake ONE cookie first!!!

10. Store in an airtight container as with wheat-based springerle.

11. Optional: melt semi-sweet baker’s chocolate in a double-boiler, and slather melted chocolate on the backs of the cookies. Place them on waxed paper, and when dry, store cookies in between layers of waxed paper.

* Cindy’s Flour Blend: 4 c. white or sweet rice flour, 2 c. brown rice flour, 2 c. potato starch (not potato flour!), 1 c. tapioca starch (courtesy of Carol Fenster, PhD.)

Vanilla Sugar Cookie

Here's a tender sugar cookie that holds the patterns of the cookie molds quite well.

Combine sugar and water in a saucepan. Stir over moderate heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, add butter, Crisco and vanilla and stir until cool.

Dissolve soda in 1 T. water and add to sugar mixture.

Add flour gradually and work until dough is firm.

Form cookies; roll dough out with plain rolling pin, press cookie mold that has been brushed with flour into dough, cut cookies and place on cookie sheets. Be sure to flour mold before every pressing.

Bake in a 350 degree oven 10 minutes. You may have to adjust time based on cookie size. Ten minutes is good for a basic 2” cookie.

These cookies will keep 1 week in a tightly sealed container. I suggest metal tins.

Do you like nutmeg? Try adding 1 teaspoon of freshly ground nutmeg with the vanilla. Yum!!

"Golden Nut" Filled Cookies

(Use with house on the hill walnut mold M5120)

Cream Cheese Butter Cookies

Sift together flour, salt and cinnamon-set aside. Cream butter and cream cheese together. Gradually add sugar and mix well. Beat in egg, vanilla, and orange rind, then slowly the flour mixture. Chill dough well-overnight or longer and chill scraps in the freezer before re-rolling. Press a ball of dough into the nut mold ( the point of a knife helps to start them out.) No drying is needed before baking. Bake 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees F. Alternate flavors- almond, pecan orange ect.

Walnut Filling (or pecan, hazelnut)

• 11/2 C. ground walnuts
• 1 C. confectioners sugar
• 2 T. butter, softened
• 2 T. strong coffee

Peanut Butter Filling

• 1 1/2 C. peanut butter
• 3 T. light corn syrup
• 4 tsp. heavy cream
• 2 T. softened butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 lb. confectioners sugar

Mix together well. Roll or scoop inot a ball and squash between two baked nut cookie halves until it overflows pleasingly between them.

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