Sunday 29 November 2009

Baking Adventures: Christmas Cookies - part 1: Speculatius

This weekend I got properly started with the Christmas baking. I made some Lebkuchen last weekend, but that was just a short prelude to this weekend's proper baking. And I'm not done yet either, but I'm finally getting into the spirit of things, even if it's much later than usual for me, as I've been known to start planning my Christmas baking in late September!

This weekend, I made two kinds of Christmas cookies: Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars) and Speculatius. I made the cinnamon stars yesterday and forgot to document them, so I'll report on that at another time. However, although I prepared the Speculatius dough yesterday, I didn't get around to shaping and baking it until today, and this time remembered to take pictures.

I've been making Speculatius using the traditional wooden models for over ten years now, but especially in recent times I haven't made them every year, as I always struggled both with the consistency of the dough and the shaping with the wooden models.