Springerle

Springerle are German Christmas cookies made with Anis seeds and molds passed down from generation to generation.

my Springerle molds, almost 100 years old. Usually they are passed down from grandmothers to daughters but you can still find some of these treasures on eBay or Etsy. If you don’t, you can also use regular cookie cutouts.

Springerle
or German Anis Cookies

for about 40 Cookies, depending on the size of your molds

ingredients

500g powdered sugar

4 eggs (200g)

500g flour

1/2 tsp Hirschhornsalz (ammonium carbonate)

1 tsp Anis seeds

steps

Whisk the eggs in the bowl of your mixing machine until foamy, then add the powdered sugar little by little on highest speed. Mix for about 5 Minutes until it is pale and fluffy.

Mix the flour and Hirschhornsalz/ammonium carbonate and fold it under. Cover the dough and let it rest in the fridge overnight or at least 2 hours.

Flour your worktop. Place the dough next to you and use it in portions, covering the rest of it as it dries out quickly. Take a piece of the dough, roll it out evenly until it is about 1,5cm thick, slightly flour the top, then gently press the molds on top of the dough. Cut the cookies out with a knife or pastry wheel. Place them on a baking sheet. Continue with the rest of the dough.

Let the cookies dry for one day in your kitchen. They will harden on the top and the beautiful pictures won´t melt away in the oven.

The next day, place a baking sheet on your baking tray and sprinkle it with Anis Seeds. Tap the cookies on a wet paper towel and then place them on the Seeds. Like this, they will grow their characteristic feet during baking.

Bake at 150°C for about 20 minutes.

Store in an airtight container. The aroma of the Anis will infuse the whole cookies during the next days.

Traditionally these cookies were baked some weeks before christmas and then carefully placed in linen Towel to hang them outside of the house. Like this, they absorb some of the moisture outside and get soft until Christmas.

dipping them in water and them placing them on a baking sheet sprinkled with anis seeds

when being baked the cookies grow on the bottom and get little “feet”