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Christmas cookies

THE 4TH ADVENT IS HERE AND CHRISTMAS EVE IS NEAR!

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Christmas is near – How about a special cookie treat for Santa  !

cookies-210718_1920Have you started your Christmas Bakery yet? If not, here is a great recipe to delight your family and friends with some German Hazelnut Macaroons. They are easy to make and taste  heavenly delicious !

German Christmas Cookies: Hazelnut Macaroons

(Recipe by our guest author Gabriele Utz)

German Christmas Cookies: Hazelnut Macaroons

German Christmas cookies Hazelnut Macaroons (in German Haselnussmakronen) is a classic German recipe for the Holiday season and for Christmas. Germany is known for its unique and delicious Christmas Bakery. If you have not made any German Christmas cookies before, this is a good starter cookie as it is very easy to make. Happy Baking!

Ingredients German Christmas Cookies
4 egg white
200 g sugar
200 g ground hazelnuts or hazelnut flour
hazelnuts cut in half for decoration
1 hint of cinnamon
2 tbsp flour for dusting
30 wafers( very thin round piece of unleavened bread) Purchase the wafers online

Baking Instructions German Christmas Cookies
– Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
– Beat egg white with pinch of salt very firm (so firm that if you cut it with the knife you would see the cut!)
– Add sugar; sieve it over the firm egg white and carefully mix it.
– Then add the hazelnuts and cinnamon and mix it carefully. If you cannot get ground hazelnuts or hazelnut flour, you can use a coffee grinder to grind them.
– Dust a baking tray with flour.
– Place on each wafer with 2 teaspoons a small amount of hazelnut batter and place in the middle one half of a hazelnut.
– Bake them for 10-15 minutes depending on the oven. Check frequently, you don’t want the wafers become brown.

Tip
If you want you can bake them without the wafers too. Instead using wafers for the bottom you can use melted chocolate and dip the bottoms of the baked macaroons in it briefly.

Article Source: MyBestGermanRecipes.com

—————————————————————————————————————–        ABOUT

MyBestGermanRecipes.comMyBestGermanRecipes is the creation of Gabriele Utz. Interested in cooking and baking ever since she can think of she now has turned her passion into reality, and has started an online cookbook with authentic German recipes in 2010. The website offers more than 300 original German recipes.
website | Twitter | Facebook

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Christmas Bakery – Peffernüsse, a German Christmas Recipe

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English: Christmas cookies and decoration.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The First Advent Sunday is today and Christmas season has officially started. Traditionally the four weeks of Advent are represented by four candles on an Advent wreath. The first one will get lit today and then it’s only four more weeks until Christmas eve is here!

Christmas cookies are a must for this festive holiday season. So we thought of starting you out with a scrumptious recipe for traditional “Peffernüsse” by our guest author Gabriele Utz of MyBestGermanRecipes. She  will share with us one of her favorite recipes on each of the four Advent Sundays plus a special one for New Year‘s Eve. Give it a try and fill your home with the sweet scents of gingerbread spices!

Happy First of Advent!

GERMAN PFEFFERNÜSSE 

(by Gabriele Utz, MyBestGermanRecipes.com)
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This is an authentic German Pfeffernusse recipe as you would find in Germany. German Pfeffernusse are traditional Christmas cookies and very popular. You can find them in any bakery or supermarket in Germany. Get some German tradition into your home with this recipe. The ingredient Hirschhornsalz, in English Hartshorn or Ammonium Carbonate, is a traditional Gingerbread (Lebkuchen) ingredient since hundreds of years and was originally taken from deer’s antlers. It makes the dough raise but not in height, it makes it wider. Happy Baking!

Pfeffernuesse

Ingredients (20 pieces) German Pfeffernusse
125 honey
50 g sugar
2 tbsp butter
250 g flour (whole grain if you like)
1/2 tsp Hirschhornsalz (Ammonium Carbonate) – Find here the German original or an American product:
Ammonium Carbonate (Baker’s Ammonia) 2.7 oz
1 egg
2 tsp ginger bread spice – Edora Lebkuchen Gewurz (Gingerbread Spices) 1 – .05oz Package
1/4 tsp white pepper
1 pinch salt
125 g powdered sugar
1 tbsp rum

Baking Instructions German Pfeffernusse 
– Heat butter, honey and sugar and melt it.
– Mix flour, egg, Hirschhornsalz and spices, add honey dough and knead it  thoroughly with knead hooks.
– Form balls out of the dough and bake them on 190 C or 375 F for 12 minutes; bake the next portion only for 10 minutes.
– Make the glaze out of powdered sugar and rum and a bit of water.
– Spread glaze over the cooled off cookies and let them dry.
– Keep them at least 2 days in a tin box with a piece of bread or a piece of apple, so they get soft.
If you like you can make  a dark chocolate glaze and spread it on half of the cookies, and have the other half white.

Recipe Article Source:
 
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ABOUT

MyBestGermanRecipes.comMyBestGermanRecipes is the creation of Gabriele Utz. Interested in cooking and baking ever since she can think of she now has turned her passion into reality, and has started an online cookbook with authentic German recipes in 2010. The website offers more than 300 original German recipes. 
website | Twitter | Facebook
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Advent, Advent, ein Lichtlein brennt…

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Advent, Advent,
ein Lichtlein brennt!
Erst eins, dann zwei, dann drei, dann vier,
dann steht das Christkind vor der Tür!

Christmas – the favorite season of the year, is here! The first Advent happened already last week and children started opening their advent calendars on December 1st. As the little folk poem says “…First one (candle) then two, then three, then four – then Christmas is in front of your door” and with that the end of the year is very fast approaching.

Before I even want to go into New Year’s solutions , are you prepared for Christmas? Well, I certainly am not and it frankly scares me to hear if someone says they have already bought all their Christmas presents and are ready to go! But presents are just one part of the whole Christmas experience. What about Christmas cookies? Should you be a baking expert then I am sure you are right in the middle of it now. If you are not into baking or just bake a few traditional cookies, and still would like to enjoy a greater variety of German Christmas delicacies,  GermanDeli.com is a great way to start Christmas shopping for German Christmas cookies ,cakes and much more.

Every year when I put in my order online it always has been a great experience from the moment I send off the online order to receiving the package. It is a pleasure to see how this company knows what customer service means. From the time the online order is sent of, GermanDeli.com is in communication with you per email, letting you know the progress of your order. When the package arrives, one will find the order packed into a climate box that’s attractively covered by a black cardboard with a German flag ribbon. Upon opening the box one will find the products all separately wrapped or packed and kept at a certain temperature level with the help of cooling ice packs (which by arrival have become watery but did definitely do their job). Everything is perfectly kept and all cookies are still in one and not partly broken, which happened before when I used a different online store to get my German Christmas goodies.

The GermanDeli online store is a great alternative to having family and friends send  stuff over from Germany or even to finding a German store in your vicinity. They have a great Christmas selection, which unfortunately does sell out quickly the closer Christmas approaches. So get your order in quickly before it’s too late and remember to start your Christmas cookie shopping early next year. Otherwise there is no other way around baking them all yourself …

Schoene Vorweihnachtszeit!

 

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