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Springerles
Stir very thoroughly together 1 pound powdered sugar and 4 eggs, then add 2 knife-points of cleaned potash, and the grated rind of 1 lemon. When well mixed add 1 pound of fine flour. Roll out the dough 1/4 inch thick, and be careful to flour the moulds well before pressing out the cakes. Remove carefully from the moulds and lay on a board covered with anise-seed, figure-side up. Stand aside for 12 hours in a cold place, then place in pans and bake in a hot oven. Work the dough as cold as possible.
A stiff, sugar-heavy egg dough printed with a carved board or pin, air-dried, then baked pale so the design survives. Two things decide whether it works: how long the eggs and sugar are beaten, and the overnight drying.
- Beat far longer than seems necessaryA pound of confectioners' sugar with four eggs wants 15 to 30 minutes in a stand mixer until the mass is very pale, thick and ribbon-like. Much of the biscuit's lift comes from this aeration rather than from the small quantity of potash; underbeaten dough tends to give a hard, dense cake and a blurred print.
- Cleaned potashPotash here is pearlash, potassium carbonate, the old wood-ash leavener. Buy it as food-grade Pottasche from a baking supplier; do not use potassium carbonate sold for pH adjustment, pottery or cleaning. A "knife-point" is roughly an eighth of a teaspoon, so two amounts to about a quarter teaspoon, dissolved in a few drops of water before it goes in. Baker's ammonia is the usual modern stand-in.
- "Hot oven" is misleading hereSpringerle must stay ivory-white. Bake at 300 to 325F for 15 to 25 minutes depending on thickness, on the lowest rack, until the bases are just set and faintly coloured and the tops are still pale. Anything at true "hot oven" heat browns the raised design and cracks it.
- The drying is not optionalTwelve hours uncovered in a cool, dry room is the minimum; 24 is better in humid weather. The surface should be dry to the touch and slightly leathery. Undried cakes slump and lose the picture, and they will not develop the characteristic "foot" at the base.
- Flour, dough thickness, and the mouldsA pound of sugar to a pound of flour makes a dough that should be firm enough to print cleanly; hold back a couple of ounces of the flour and add it only if the dough sticks. Roll a full quarter inch or slightly more, flour the mould and knock out the excess, press firmly and evenly, then trim. Working cold, as the recipe says, keeps the dough from sticking and softening.
- The anise bedWhole aniseed scattered on the board becomes the bottom of the biscuit and perfumes it from below. Many modern versions scatter it on the baking sheet the cakes will actually bake on, so they are moved only once.
- Yield and keepingRoughly four to five dozen biscuits of two inches. They bake very hard, and the tradition is to store them several weeks in a tin, where they are said to soften and the anise flavour to round out.