Category Archives: Christmas Cookies

December 12th, 2009

Podvodnik

Podvodnik (süße Betrüger)When Zorra asked for a theme for my post in her culinary advent calender I had to think for a long time. Christmas seems so far away in October!

At the end I decieded to post a about Podvodnik. Its a cookie recipe that use yeast to rise the cookie. A perfect recipe for my blog, because “Hefe und mehr” means “Yeast and more”!

Podvodnik is czech and means sweet liar. I found the recipe on the homepage of Radio Praha and I was fascinated from the way the dough is prepared. The dough contains no sugar and it ferments one hour in a bowl with cold water. The sweet taste comes from rolling the hot cookies in vanilla flavoured powdered sugar. That sounds strange but it tastes great: a sandy cookie with a nice taste of vanilla. A little bit like vanilla crescents, but somehow different. Delicious! Continue reading

December 6th, 2009

Liebesgrübchen

Liebesgrübchen (1)We call them Liebesgrübchen (I don`t know how to translate this. Maybe love pit?) for other people they are Engelsaugen (angle eyes) or Gulatschen.

And after some resarch I find the english name Thumbprint cookies for them. But how ever you call them, they are delicious!

Liebesgrübchen are a traditional cookie for christmas in my familiy and there is no christmas without them. Normaly I bake a recipe from “Handbuch für die Weihnachtsbäckerei” from Pfeifer & Langen, but this year I brake the tradition somehow when testing Bäcker Süpkes Recipe for Gulatschen.

His recipe contains less sugar and egg but much more butter. He recommends to rest the dough one night in fridge to get a nice sandy cookie. My dough stayed in fridge even for 36 hours because on friday, when I planned to bake I had to stay in lab untill night because my experiments worked not the way they should. So I postpone baking to Saturdaymorning. Continue reading