Christmas cookies
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Christmas biscuits (Swiss: Weihnachtsgüetzi , Weihnachtsguetzli etc.) are mainly sweet baked goods that are traditionally baked in the Advent season and consumed during the Christmas season . Examples are biscuits , gingerbread , Christmas stollen , fruit bread , Förtchen , cinnamon stars , speculoos or vanilla crescents .
Christmas biscuits include many long- life long- life baked goods made from gingerbread or shortcrust pastry, and larger industrial manufacturers often bake these products as early as July or August. The retail trade is now offering Christmas baked goods such as Spekulatius, Printen, wafer gingerbread and dominoes from the end of August.
history
Excavations and early pictorial representations show that there was ritual baking at festive times even in pre-Christian times. The origin of today's Christmas biscuits is believed to be in medieval monasteries. Exquisite baked goods were customary to commemorate the birth of Jesus. The stollen was a monastic Advent pastry and recipes for gingerbread were also developed in the monasteries. Saint Hildegard von Bingen described the positive effect of nutmegs in gingerbread and pepper nuts on the mood.
industrialization
Today Christmas baking is heavily industrialized. In 2015, the German manufacturers together produced around 82,000 tonnes of Christmas cookies with a turnover of over 400 million euros. Christmas biscuits are currently marketed in the trade as Advent or “autumn biscuits” and are already offered and consumed in early autumn, which not infrequently leads to criticism from churches but also from consumers. For example, EKD Vice President Thies Gundlach said: “We don't like the consistent commercialization of Christian festivals” and criticized both the time of the sale and the name “autumn pastries”. The Advent , for the pastries as Spekulatius was actually baked was a time of penance have even fasted in one. Hermann Bühlbecker - owner of the printen, stollen and gingerbread manufacturer Lambertz - replied "We have long since removed the biscuits from Christmas by connecting them with autumn". In Russia or in countries in South America he sells printen and gingerbread all year round; in Germany in cities like Aachen, Nuremberg and Dresden.
cookie
The term cookies is the diminutive of "space", a "flat-shaped cake", in southern Germany Platzerl , Brötle , Gutsle , Läuble , Switzerland Biscuit , in dialect Güetzi , biscuits , gutzi called and similar. Often, sweet biscuits such as cookies , confectionery and the like are generally regarded as cookies.
At Christmas, cookies are traditionally baked mainly in families. The production of the different types of cookies is very different: Cookies that are made from rolled-out shortcrust pastry can be made with different cookie cutters, Springerle and Spekulatius are modeled . Other types of biscuits are shaped by hand: rolled and shaped, such as vanilla crescents , pretzel shapes, rings or Bethmännchen , or molded from dough, such as shortbread cookies . Cookies are often named after an important ingredient : aniseed cookies , cinnamon stars , coconut macaroons
In Switzerland, there are cinnamon stars and aniseed cookies , Chräbeli or Badener Chräbeli (named after the Swiss city of Baden ), Mailänderli and Brunsli .
In Greece, typical Christmas cookies are kourabiedes and melomakarona .
gingerbread
Lebkuchen, also known as gingerbread, are usually slightly larger pieces of pastry made from a spicy , dark dough . They differ, for example, in the sweetener used ( rock sugar , honey or syrup ) or in the decoration (with sugar or chocolate icing , with almonds and candied fruits ), some varieties are baked on wafers (many Nuremberg gingerbread ). In many areas, pepper nuts are valued in the run-up to Christmas. In the Polish city of Toruń (formerly Thorn) the Thorner Katharinchen are known.
Christmas stollen
Stollen and Klaben are pastries made from heavy yeast dough . Today they are offered as almond, butter, marzipan, persipan, nut or quark stollen. The best-known Christmas stollen is the so-called Dresdner Stollen , which is made according to a precisely specified recipe.
Other Christmas biscuits
Other cake-like Christmas biscuits are, for example, fruit bread , Linzer torte , the Italian panettone and Scandinavian Jul cake . Some types of Christmas biscuits have proven so popular that they are now available in bakeries all year round. These include Hilda rolls and sugar rings ( fondant ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Ostpreussisches Landesmuseum , accessed on September 12, 2009.
- ↑ It's all about the spices: Why Christmas bakery puts you in a good mood. In: Wissenschaft.de. September 12, 2009, accessed September 8, 2019 .
- ↑ Christmas will soon be in stores - the demand for cinnamon stars and gingerbread is increasing . In: Der Tagesspiegel , August 28, 2015; Retrieved April 19, 2017
- ↑ Spekulatius at Freibad-Wetter , handelsblatt.com from September 5, 2016, accessed on November 22, 2018
- ↑ Eckhard Supp : Duden. Dictionary culinary arts. From amuse-bouche to decorative snow . Dudenverlag, Mannheim a. a. 2011, ISBN 978-3-411-70392-0 , Chapter: Regional dishes in German-speaking countries , p. 85 .