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Sweet treat- post holidays!

I am sending this recipe for the Monthly mingle- World of spice cookies hosted by Meeta K. I got this beautiful recipe from Chris's blog. These cookies are a native of the land of Danes. Despite lacking in confidence, this recipe has such interesting mix of flavors, I just had to try it and I did. The name translates to peppernut cookies. I am not sure if it means pepper and nuts or just pepper. Anyway this recipe I have used does not involve nuts, just a combination of spices. But I have seen a lot of variations of these cookies.

 Pfeffernüsse

For Step I
1/4 cup molasses
1 1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/4 tsp pure Anise extract

Combine the three ingredients over low heat in a non-reactive pot until the butter has melted. The mixture will become thin. DO NOT BOIL.
Remove from heat and pour into a large bowl. Cool to lukewarm temperature.
After the mixture has cooled beat in the beaten egg and anise extract

For Step II

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp nutmeg (the recipe says freshly grated nutmeg but I only had already ground nutmeg on hand, may be this was too strong!)
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground clove
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
Pinch of salt
Sift together all the dry ingredients. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients into the liquid mixture. At the end of it you will get a slightly sticky dough (in retrospect mine was a little dry, I did not have enough sense to add some milk to rectify the dryness!).
Refrigerate until cold, then wrap and chill again (I chilled the dough for about 7 hours).
Preheat the oven at 350C
Roll the dough into small, round balls (~ 1 inch diameter), and line them up on a cookie sheet.
Place the cookie sheet in the oven for about 15min, turn it around once. (I am not sure if the cookie sheet needs to be greased or not, I did not and there was not any problem- the underside of these cookie did seem a little burnt)
Cool the cookies completely and coat them thorougly with confectioners sugar.

I really liked all the spices in this cookie and unlike some of the other cookies, it was not sweet except for the powdered sugar coating.
These tiny bundles of joy and warmth are going out to a few friends (hopefully they will relish them as much as I did)
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Comments

  1. Meeta KJanuary 6, 2009 at 5:35 AM

    simply gorgeous. we get pfeffernüsse here in germany too. i just adore them but have never tried making them at home. thanks for the entry!

    ReplyDelete

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