And that when I had planned to make Fridays about mail and penpalling … Everyday I await the mailman impatiently and then … nothing… oh well… I’ve had periods like this before (and no one needs to feel guilty 
)
So I thought I could make Fridays not just about mail but also about Christmas cookies =) because today I started baking for Christmas … or rather for the whole advent season. Since Christmas is still five weeks away and the advent season hasn’t really begun I chose two kinds of cookies that are not necessarily immediately associated with Christmas but which still belong on every German Christmas cookie plate: Heidesand and Schwarz-Weiß Gebäck.
the Heidesand dough cut up. Actually it's supposed to be round but it was so crumbly that this was all I could manage
Heidesand is one of my favourite kind of cookies but I never made them myself before… baking cookies is an art so my first attempt isn’t really what I’m used from my grandma’s baking… but they taste good. So… Heidesand are traditional cookies from the north of Germany and are similar to shortbread but not quite the same. they are made with butter as well, but not as much as is used in shortbread. The trick is to brown the butter before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients and this is I think where I went wrong because I was afraid I’d spoil the butter so it probabyl wasn’t brown enough and it also wasn’t hard enough again when I started mixing the sugar in. The name means heathland sand and they are called thus because the dough (and the cookies as well) are very light in colour, like sand, and quite crumbly as well. Though, again, mine are not really that crumbly.
The second kind I made, Schwarz Weiß Gebäck, in English Black and White cookies are two coloured cookies. I couldn’t find any information as
and the spirals =)
to where these cookies originate from but they are not quite as old as Heidesand because cocoa is used and that wasn’t generally available in Europe until the 18th century I believe and even then the ordinary people wouldn’t have had access to it. So part of the dough is mixed with cocoa and then the two doughs are combined in fancy patterns. I chose the spiral because I like it as a symbol (and also because it is easy to make ) and the chessboard pattern which I screwed up a bit. I didn’t have much dough and in the end it was a little thin and broke in parts. But they turned up great anyway and taste fabulous.
For next week you can look forward to Vanillekipferl and Zedernbrot
