Home › Cakes, Puddings, and Pastry › German Xmas Cake
German Xmas Cake
Mix 1/2 pound butter with 1/2 pound powdered sugar, add yolks 6 eggs, and 3/4 pound of flour. Beat the sugar and butter before adding eggs, well beaten separately, and then the flour and a spoonful of vanilla. Roll out and form into cakes the shape of an S or a U, cover with an icing of sugar and water boiled, adding currants and candied peel, if desired. Bake in a very hot oven.
This is a stiff butter-and-yolk cookie dough of the Spritzgebäck family, not the work of a professional bakery, written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what the finished thing looked like. The proportions work; the oven instruction does not.
- The weights, convertedHalf a pound of butter is 2 sticks (225 g); half a pound of powdered sugar is about 1 3/4 cups; three-quarters of a pound of flour is roughly 2 3/4 cups. Weigh the flour if you can, since scooped cups will push the dough dry.
- "A very hot oven" is wrong for this doughPeriod oven tables generally put "very hot" somewhere around 450-500F, which will brown 2 sticks of butter and 6 yolks before the centres set. Bake these at 350-375F for 10-14 minutes, until the edges are just coloured.
- No leavening, no liquidNo leavening, no added liquid -- the yolks supply most of the moisture (butter contributes a little), so the dough will be thick and slightly crumbly rather than smooth. Work it just until it comes together; overworking tends to toughen the S shapes.
- Rolling versus piping"Roll out and form" may well mean rolling ropes with the hands rather than sheeting and cutting, though the text does not say which. If roping, make them about the thickness of a finger and curve into an S or a U. A star-tipped bag also works and gives a ridged surface.
- A spoonful of vanillaThis could mean extract or a spoonful of vanilla sugar. A tablespoon of modern extract is a great deal; 1 to 2 teaspoons is closer to what the dough wants.
- The boiled icingSugar and water boiled to a thin syrup sets to a thin glaze. Brush it on while the cookies are still warm so it grips, and press on currants or chopped candied peel before it hardens.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe makes roughly 40 to 50 finger-length cookies. They are dry-textured by design and keep two weeks in a tin, which is why they belong to Christmas baking rather than to a single meal.
S- and U-shaped butter cookies are a fixture of northern German Christmas baking, and the S form in particular is associated with Lower Saxony, where S-Gebck is still sold by the bag in December. The recipe's structure -- butter and sugar creamed, yolks only, flour worked in stiff, no raising agent -- is the classic Mrbeteig of German pastry, and the yolks contribute the pale gold colour, while the sandy crumb comes chiefly from the fat and the absence of liquid.