Pfeffernusse

The word gingerbread seems to be a bit of a catch all term for many Christmas biscuits and sometimes other desserts. At least in English. You have the gingerbread biscuits that are heavy on ground ginger and lighter on other aromatics. There is lebkuchen which can be baked both as biscuits and as a cake. And then there are gingerbread biscuits that either omit the ginger or use it sparingly and whose dominant spice is usually black pepper or cloves or both. These are my favourites.

In fact if you are lacking a bit of controversial opinion in your life, here is one. I really don’t like heavily gingered gingerbread. My favourite gingerbread biscuits are not home made at all but from a Latvian chocolate company called Laima. These little jewels have all the good hallmarks of a good gingerbread biscuit - perfectly balanced spices, crisp yet not too hard, has wonderful dunkability and beautiful designs.

However this will be the second jolly season when I have been deprived of them and unfortunately I haven’t found any good substitutes in Perth. The closest I have come across are the German pfeffernusse but even they suffer from the unfortunate side effect of factory made aftertaste. So I decided to do sometimes about it. If the Laima biscuits are the unachievable holy grail of my gingerbread world, then pfeffernusse is something that me, a mortal, could attempt to make. Luckily the lovely Dorie Greenspan did most of the heavy lifting for me by publishing a very lovely pfeffernusse recipe in her cookbook Dories Cookies. All I needed to do was to make a batch of the biscuits and adjust it to my liking. Alright I got a bit carried away and made 5…. because science … and work ethics. Don’t judge me.

Pfeffernusse

the recipe has been adapted from Dories Cookies by Dorie Greenspan

260 grams flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp soda
125 grams brown sugar
85 grams butter, room temperature
1 tbsp rum
2 eggs
15 cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp black pepper
seeds of 8 cardamon pods
icing sugar for dusting, if you please

Grind together cloves, pepper and cardamon seeds, the mix with other spices and flour, baking powder and soda. Set aside.

Whip together together butter with sugar until it has doubled in volume and has become light and fluffy. Add rum and the eggs one at a time. Lastly add the dry ingredients and mix until everything has been incorporated. Put in the fridge to merry the flavours. The longer you keep it the better it will taste.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C. Divide the dough into small portions (mine were about 40 grams) and roll into balls. Place them on a baking sheet, squash the just a little bit and bake for about 20 minutes. When biscuits have been cooled, can toss them in icing sugar.