I remember these cookies from way back. An old auntie always used to make them for Christmas time and wrap them on a plate with lots of plastic wrap and curly ribbon. They're molded cookies and now I have my great-grandmother's springerle roller to make them. Unfortunately, her recipe is a lot of chicken-scratch and I don't think she included all the steps. This recipe is probably the next best thing to it though. It is taken from The Cuisines of Germany by Horst Schargenberg (from Poseidon Press) and includes little chatty bits that you'd expect from an old family recipe.

Springerle

Anise flavored cookies from Baden-Württemberg

This recipe requires perhaps just a bit of baking artistry and, above all, a certain amount of care; traditionally, a decorative design is pressed into the dough with the help of a carved wooden pattern called a Model, a nice and moderately priced souvenir you can buy when traveling in Germany.

Beat the egg whites into stiff peaks, then combine with egg yolk and sugar and stir vigourously. All the earlier recipes suggest that you keep stirring for at least 15 minutes, but with the help of an electric eggbeater, the time devoted to this task can be considerably reduced (7 minutes). Add the flour, baking powder and the dried grated lemon peel to the eggs and knead vigorously until the dough is soft and pliable.

Let stand for at least 1 hour in the refrigerator or other cool place, then roll out into a thin sheet. As mentioned, a carved wooden Model that has been dusted with flour is customarily used to imprint little figures or decorative patterns into the dough, and the cookies are cut out of the sheet of dough in accordance with these patterns. If no Model or reasonable facsimile is available, one or more metal cookie cutters can be used to much the same effect. (And if you don't use a Model, just sprinkle the flour directly on top of the cookies.)

Grease the baking sheet with butter and sprinkle with aniseed. Place the cookies on the baking sheet and allow to sit and dry out (at room temperature) overnight, or until the surface is quite dry and even hard. Those who have the patience to lift up each cookie, then brush a little water onto the underside to moisten it, will be rewarded with especially good results. Be careful, however, not to let so much as a drop of water get onto the tops of the cookies!

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Leave the oven door open a little ( "a little" being a bit more than "a crack" in this case) during the first 20 minutes of the baking time; then close the door and raise the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for another 20 minutes. The topsides of the Springerle should be almost white, and the flour can be dusted off with a brush but should definitely be allowed to remain in place until now. Also, since the hardened crust on top prevents the dough from rising any further in that direction, the cookies should also have acquired a sort of little platform or pedestal down below, call a Füsschen (little foot).

Makes about 60 cookies

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