It's Pfefferkuchen Time!

The oven timer is going, ding, ding, ding.

 One baked pan is done and the last pan just went in.

Last year I was too ill to even think about baking for Christmas, and thanks to my good friends, as you may recall, my freezer got filled up. I was going to write: "No such luck this year," but I never want to feel as ill as I felt last year around this time.

Peter and I were looking forward to baking these little delicious 

cookies, called by several names and made close to Christmas season; it's another job we like doing together.

The Low German dictionary describes them as: 

Pfeffernuesse (Gebaeck); sweet cookies with pepper content, hard, pepper-flavored pellet-like cookies, eaten as candy. 

There are many recipes, and I have tried different ones, but today I used Frieda's recipe. She also sent me two photographs taken two years ago of her 3 beautiful helpers. 

Frieda and Werner's grand-daughters from l-r: Nicole, Julia, Krista 

(Gordon & Shelly)

Frieda is Peter's paternal cousin, but through DNA work, I discovered she is also my cousin who knows how far back, and it happened probably somewhere in Molotschna many years ago. 

Pfeffernuesse

Heat and cool  to luke warm--

1 1/2 cups honey

        2 cups of white sugar

1/4 lb lard

1/4 lb butter (margarine)

-----------------

Mix 3 tsp. baking soda in 1/4 cup warm water.

Add 1 cup of whipping cream and mix into the luke warm honey mixture.

Mix well (with  mixer if you have one) other wise it's 'elbow grease'

Measure 7 cups flour into a large bowl

       Plus 1 tsp. cinnamon

                  2 pkgs "Neunerleh"  Lebkuchen spice mix (from the deli on Alexander Ave.) I have even used 3 pkgs - we like the flavour very much)

 1 tsp salt.    

 (stir the flour/spice mix until blended)

Dump the honey/whipping cream  mixture into this large bowl of flour and mix til well blended and dough feels good to handle.  If it is too soft add a little more flour until you like the feel of it.

Should feel like any cookie dough made for rolled out or molded cookies.    Let rest  in fridge overnight -  Next day take portions of the dough and make "snakes." Put them on cookie sheets lined with parchment and put into the freezer for a few hours.  Then remove one sheet at a time, cut into 1/4 inch slices on a bread board and put on cookie sheets (greased/or parchment lined) and bake at 325º until done.  They burn easily so check them after 10 minutes by turning one over. If the bottom is brown-ish then they're done - the tops are just golden not brown.  Dump them on the counter to cool. Make a cup of coffee, sit down and have a dozen or so.    Enjoy

(hope this works out for you - sounds complicated but isn't - sure are good tho. )

First you mix...

then you...I flattened the dough to cool it off faster in the fridge.
Then you...Oops!
I forgot to take a photograph of the "snakes!"
You will have to use your imagination.
Or I'll quickly...

After the "snakes" have been in the freezer for a few hours

 (or...as in my case, for a day or two because Peter and I attended a very informative all day genealogy workshop in Abbotsford) they are sliced and now are...

 ready for the oven and...

 Ready to eat!

Before Peter and I started to bake them, I was wondering,

 "What is the origin of these little peppernut cookies?" 

This is what I found on the computer when I googled my question:

(from Emily's View) 

 Where did the recipe come from? How long has this delightful Christmas cookie been handed down?

Again, I turn to the book  Mennonite Foods & Folkways from South Russia by Norma Jost Voth - Old recipes frequently called for black pepper. Used in cautious amounts - pepper blends quietly and enhances the other spices. In medieval times, ginger and pepper were used together. The basic ingredients - honey, eggs and flour - were made for centuries. When trade routes opened across Europe in the 14th century -spices from distant lands came to Germany and France and created a baking revolution. During the Middle Ages, a pound of ginger would buy a sheep. Pepper was the most coveted of all spices. In medieval France, a pound of pepper could buy a serf his freedom. Pfeffer means spices Thus came the names of Pfefferkuchen (pepper cookies) and Pfeffernusse. Papanat (pay-pah-nayt) was the low dutch word, and the word I learned as a child.

There is more history in this book, that declares that Hillsboro, is the Peppernut Capital of Kansas. 267,000 are prepared each day. Four kinds were made - raisin, nut, gumdrop and anise. As a child, Mom had the three of us roll 'snakes' of dough, cut with a knife in small pieces, and then place in a pan for baking.There are approximately 30 recipes for peppernuts from Swedish, Danish connection, Dutch, Danzig, Friedrichstadter (made for Duke Frederick), German and Russian types of Peppernuts

They are addictive!

 They just keep pop, pop, popping into your mouth!

Love,

Hilda