Xmas cookies & biscuits

[Fippy]

Which ones do you like best..or are they all great?
Cinnamon..cardamom..nutmeg..vanilla..what are your favorite ingredients if you like baking & experimenting?
Just tell me anything
How about Speculoos?

My first tries this year are with coconut flakes partly replacing sugar, getting it down to ~15g sugar in 100g cookies.
Vanilla plays an important role here, imo it's well known flavor also covers for less sugar.
Cardamom seems to synergise with just about everything. Cinnamon can quickly make for darker dough..which might be desired or not.

 

[tjs282]

My wife has made batches of Zimtsterne and Vanillekipferl for every Christmas we've lived in Germany, so I guess those are my favourites

We buy Lebkuchen and Spekulatzius (sp.?), though, and those also tend to disappear quite fast. She tried making Lebkuchen a couple of years back, but the attempt wasn't very successful. So we went back to buying them instead.

 

[Fippy]

Lebkuchen are def. next level baking..prolly too difficult for me as well.
Spekulatius = Speculoos yup.

 

[Ordnael]

cardamom

Cardamom?
Cardamom!?
Not even for a gin tonic mix. Tried it once...blagh!

 

[Snowygerry]

Which ones do you like best..or are they all great?
Cinnamon..cardamom..nutmeg..vanilla..what are your favorite ingredients if you like baking & experimenting?
Just tell me anything
How about Speculoos?

My first tries this year are with coconut flakes partly replacing sugar, getting it down to ~15g sugar in 100g cookies.
Vanilla plays an important role here, imo it's well known flavor also covers for less sugar.
Cardamom seems to synergise with just about everything. Cinnamon can quickly make for darker dough..which might be desired or not.

Christmas cookies are not really a tradition here, but Speculoos certainly is...

The story of Speculoos: The Belgian biscuit that united a nation

From humble Flemish origins to becoming a global sensation, Speculoos is a jewel of Belgian food culture. But plans to change the name have triggered backlash.

www.brusselstimes.com

Although now available year-round, the biscuit has festive origins and is traditionally eaten on the feast day of Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas (who inspired Santa Claus), on 6 December. Children would leave their shoes out the night before and wake up to them full of biscuits and mandarins, having been visited by Sinterklaas during the night.
The biscuits are therefore typically shaped into figures of Sinterklaas (or his helper Zwarte Piet) using wooden moulds. The word 'Speculoos' supposedly derives from the Latin speculum (mirror): it is the mirror image of the wooden mould in which it has been made.

In a bid to draw a wider crowd, the third-generation director wanted to replace it with the anglicised 'Biscoff' (a contraction of biscuit and coffee), regarding Speculoos too difficult for an international audience to pronounce. Until then, Biscoff was widely used but Speculoos remained on packaging in Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Mince pies all the way

 

[Plains-Cow]

I like vanilla!

 

[Quintillus]

I love cardamom. Not Christmas-y per se, but I have a cardamom crumb cake recipe that I love. And one of the local coffee shops has a cardamom roll that is excellent.

In general, though? Cinnamon is my go-to. Swedish-style kanelbullar? Lovely. American-style cinnamon rolls? Way too much icing and sweetness, I avoid them. Cinnamon in Greek-style spaghetti bolognese, with some cloves? Underrated.

Vanilla is excellent but has to be done the right way to stand out. Honestly, I can't beat the local Austro-Hungarian bakery's cremeschnitte. There's a reason they've been in business for 60 years with it as their piece de résistance. I'll admit that overall I think their chocolate is even better than the traditional vanilla - the chocolate is so rich - but the vanilla is fantastic as well.

I see one of my favorite food bloggers (whose currywurst recipe I just made and shared with friends, to acclaim) has recipes for both zimtsterne and vanillekipferl. I may have to make them this winter. I'm pretty sure I did try lebkuchen a few years ago but wasn't that impressed, but perhaps I bought the wrong brand. I now live very close to a German market that has a much larger selection of imported German goods, so perhaps I should try them again. Recommendations on the best brands are welcome .

 

[Fippy]

If price doesn't matter: Witte and Düll (2 different brands) Nürnberger Elisen-Lebkuchen are brilliant.

 

[Kyriakos]

Both are chocolate-based and biscuity:

 

[amadeus]

My grandmother used to make just plain sugar cookies. I’m not much of a gourmet and have very proletarian tastes.

 

[Fippy]

I'm not sure why the term sugar cookie exists
It's part of every recipe..just depends on how much sugar you want in.

But when i look up sugar cookies, they use vanilla - almond - butter - egg - cream (maybe not everything always).
Feels like saying today i make tomato pizza. Or cheese lasagne.

 

[PhroX]

Mince pies all the way

Definitely. Though I've really become partial to the non-traditional puff pasty ones in recent years.

But if we're discussing xmas biscuits, I have to mention those selection tins for the brief time they actually contain biscuits and not sewing supplies. Usually some good ones in there, though I dunno what they're called.

 

[Plains-Cow]

I'm not sure why the term sugar cookie exists
It's part of every recipe..just depends on how much sugar you want in.

But when i look up sugar cookies, they use vanilla - almond - butter - egg - cream (maybe not everything always).
Feels like saying today i make tomato pizza. Or cheese lasagne.

Sugar cookies have an emphasis on being overly sweet and often have that as the focus. The name is about the focal point, not the fact that it's a sweet. They can be frosted (they often are) or un-frosted (with plain sugar crystals sprinkled on top). Any almond and vanilla present are practically not existent flavor-wise and might only add a smell to the middle when biting the cookie. Anglosphere cookies, especially in the USA, will focus on sugar and oil over complex flavors. That's a hallmark of European desserts.


You can also make a "cheese" lasagna if the cheese is supposed to be a focal point of the dish, like if it's extra-cheesy or a four-cheese lasagna. Same thing with the name being the focus regardless if it's a default ingredient in the recipe present in all forms (like sugar in a cookie).


I like these, though:

 

[Fippy]

Well..smartypants mode on..sugar generally highlights other flavors, or helps with making everything smoother
I know from my own baking tries, it's very easy to overload on sugar and say: oh look..what a nice candy.

It's what the food industry does in general. Most (if not all) their sweets have 30-50% sugar.
So it's almost irrelevant what else they used.

Or here's one for you, plains cow..give Monty enuf sugar and he will win season 9.
While HC & Mansa must work with real ingredients