Talked to my mother a couple days ago. She's manic. She asked if I wanted any christmas cookies, I told her I hated them all deeply. She laughed, because she's manic. I mentioned that I had gone to the trouble of ordering Lebkuchen clear from Nuremberg just to see what the fuss was about; she said "oh I threw that recipe away last year they were so horrible." They were. They were horrible. They are always horrible. Lebkuchen is a failcookie that has to be baked on a communion wafer(we didn't) or it will stick and burn (ours always did). Then anybody reasonable dips them in chocolate (my mother hates chocolate). They're still underwhelming when done by dedicated bakers, and fucking terrible when done by a bipolar alcoholic who ruins every Christmas of everyone she can because her big brother sucked a tailpipe Dec 26 and shattered her family for generations. So the recipe should be thrown away. I'm glad it's gone. But considering the grief I went through baking those fucking cookies every goddamn year, and the strife they caused, and the preposterous pressure to put the fucking blanched almonds on just so, and the hours spent cutting candied cherries in half only to slap them on a three-day cookie that tastes for all the world like nyquil-flavored gingerbread? Why couldn't we have thrown the goddamn recipe away in 1979? My daughter adores Christmas. Today is her birthday. She derives a warmly fulfilling amount of pleasure from gift-giving, decorating, singing, and tradition. There are two wolves and one of them gets hungry at Thanksgiving.
Lebkuchen are amazing. But I never thought of or know somebody that makes them at home. Maybe that's the reason 🤣🤣 My favourite Christmas cookie is and will always stay the Spekulatius. They sell them here from August on. And I also buy them in August because dann they are good. They are the only cookie I know that get BETTER after the after the package has been opened and left to accumulate moisture. There are also other nice Christmas thingies. In no particular order. Lebkuchen Hearts, Domino Stones, Aachener Printen (these are amazing)
I just looked up Aachener Printen. That? ...yeah, that's him. You and I will have to agree to disagree. I have trauma from that damn cookie. weeks of effort in order to make a cookie you can't even trade with your friends. And yes, we ground our own spice, by hand, with one of these: But no, we didn't "candy our own orange peel" because that might render something actually good. We used candied citron, which is terrible. Pfeffernusse? Yeah, had to make that crap too. Because yeah - once you've ground spices by hand for four hours you're going to put that shit in everything It's funny. My wife's family is fond of their German heritage yet the only christmas cookie they make is a white-trash sugar cookie frosted to infinity using Crisco icing. I on the other hand grew up forced to make Lebkuchen, Pfeffernusse, these horrible things and these wretched things in a house where my mother expressed her hatred of the Germans at every available opportunity. I will freely admit none of this is the cookies' fault. But you will not convince me that Aachener Printen can ever be baked in an edible fashion. ...unless you underbake the shit out of it. Then they just get rock-hard in New Mexico's 6% winter humidity over the course of a week or so. We made one cookie worth eating. No, that's not true. I made one cookie worth eating, having desperately started rooting through the card box at the age of 8 to find anything that wasn't terrible. My mother threw the recipe away, of course, so I basically came up with my own. Nobody here eats them either because the inlaws are not fond of bourbon. There was another recipe given to us by a friend of a friend. I had them once, they were spectacular. Then I made them a couple times, they were spectacular. Then I asked for the recipe and was told that since it contained chocolate, it was "burned" while I was at college (christmas was a particularly traumatic time growing up). I poked around every now and then trying to find it, and then last year my wife stumbled across them. I teared up when I had them. They are now "lost cookies" in the recipe book.
Lebkuchengewurz an essential ingredient for a variety of German baked goods during the Christmas season, most notably Lebkuchen and Pfeffernüsse.
The standing joke is that Aachener printen are so hard that the bakers have a standing contract with the city’s dentists! Printen are characteristically hard because they’re a very low-moisture cookie: They contain no eggs, fat, milk, virtually no water, and contain three types of sugar which caramelize during baking.
Just to clarify. None of the things I mentioned should be home made. I am not aware of anyone that makes them at home. They are all store bought and from your comment, I understand why. I shall never attempt making any 🤣🤣 But, there are some other cookies that are home made and easier to make. You know, those type of cookies your grandma makes once fot Christmas in a big batch and sends them to her grandchildren. The typical examples are Vanille Kipferl, Kokosmakronen and Zimtstrene. My favourite are the Kokosmakronen, which are basically whipped egg whites with sugar and coconut pieces. If done correctly (and not over baked) they are crispy on the outside and fluffy inside. I find it interesting that the German heritage is so deeply kept or acknowledged in your family. Is that typical in the states that these traditions are kept?
Again, my mother hates the Germans with a blinding passion. It may be vaguely related to her Jewish heritage (which she's always paid lip service to) and the barely-remembered hardships of WWII (she was born a month before Pearl Harbor) but mostly I think she needs someone to hate. A family's christmas cookies are treasured by some, certainly not by everyone. Lots of people have no fucking clue how to bake. Among those who do bake, "secret family recipes" are generally things that are supposedly held close but actually shared far and wide as a point of pride. no one has ever asked anyone else for a bizcochito recipe, and our cookies were universally unpopular among those who tried them. They're f'n terrible. I would say the "typical" christmas cookie in the united states is an undifferentiated sugar cookie with amateurish frosting. That's probably why we were never allowed to make or enjoy them. As a reminder, my mother is mentally ill. Has been my entire life. Having inherited the family photos and documentation (entirely by accident) I can say with no uncertainty that my dead uncle was clearly bipolar, my grandfather was clearly bipolar, my grandfather had at least one bipolar brother and my great great grandmother was bipolar. Asking me about normie shit ain't necessarily gonna end well. ;-)