Last-Minute Christmas Prep!

Twas the night before the night before Christmas ... and all through the house ... mother was working to clean away dust and dirt! My house hasn't been this clean in months! Now if only someone could come in and clean all the blinds and windows for me and leave them streak-free, then, only THEN could I be truly happy!!!! But, no one will so this is as good as it's going to be. But at least it's relatively clean for my folks to come for dinner on Sunday so that makes me happy. Plus, I also like to live in a clean house so I do it for myself just as much as others.

Annnnd, I finally rolled out the Hildabroetchen dough and baked those things up. They are now sandwiched and glazed and drying/hardening as I write. These were my favourite cookies growing up. I still haven't perfected the recipe, though so these don't look nearly as perfect as mom's did. But they are equally delicious.

There are several cookbooks that I refer to for my German baking. These are 2:

The one on the left is in German (obviously!) and the one on the right English (again, obviously!). The German one is metric measurements (by weight, not the WRONG way by volume, like they did in Canada when we changed from Imperial to Metric measurement back in the 70's!) and the English one is both Metric and Imperial, which, to me, is still "normal"! I decided to use the "Teegebaeck" recipe in the German book which isn't quite the same as mom's - the real recipe doesn't use any baking powder - it's basically a shortbread dough. But, as I mentioned, these are equally delicious, so here we go:

Teegebaeck


500 grams all-purpose flour
6 grams (2 level teaspoons) baking powder
150 grams sugar
1 package vanilla sugar
2 eggs
250 grams cold butter

Sift together the flour, baking powder, sugar and vanilla sugar. Make a well in the center, add in eggs mixing a bit of flour into them to make a paste, then cut the cold butter over the well and the flour. Mix everything together beginning from the center and working in all the dough by hand until a soft but firm dough forms. Cover in Saran wrap and place in fridge for about 1/2 hour. When ready to roll, bring the dough out, allow to come to warm up slightly, then roll out thinly, use the cookie cutter of your choice, place on prepared cookie sheets, cut a hole in the center of half the cookies. Bake for 8 minutes at 350 F. Do not overbake!!!!

When cooled, spread the cookies with no hole with a jam of your choice. Jelly is good too, spread it really, really thin, just enough to glue the 2 cookies together. Then make a fairly thick glaze with powdered sugar and water, pain onto the top cookie being careful not to let it fill the hole, if you can. Allow to harden for at least an hour if not more.

That's it! Mmmmmm! Here are some pictures I took while putting them together:

The dough - still using my old Tupperware cookie cutters! 

Ready to bake with the centers just thrown onto the sheet

Adding the jam - I used Wild Plum Jam

And, the finished product - pretty!