It was my first Christmas Eve away from home. My new boyfriend had invited me to travel to Detroit to meet his family—a pretty serious step in a burgeoning romance—and I had already conjured up images of a storybook German Christmas, knowing that Rick’s parents had each emigrated from Germany in the early 1950s before marrying and raising a family in the United States. My mind’s eye saw fresh greenery draping every surface, wax candles flickering on the windowsills, and, of course, platters piled high with freshly baked Weihnachtsbäckerei—traditional German Christmas cookies.
Lotte’s kitchen represented, for her, the American dream. The pantry and refrigerator were filled with every kind of convenience food, from Pop-Tarts to Dijonnaise, and the few home-baked holiday goodies tended to be plain sugar cookies dotted with red and green sprinkles. Lotte’s goal was not to spend hours standing over a hot stove, but to enjoy leisure time with her family, something that must have been in short supply during her childhood. Besides, living in the Detroit area gave Lotte access to many fine Eastern European bakeries that already baked every kind of Christmas cookie, buttery, flaky delights filled with fresh fruit jam or drizzled in rich dark chocolate.
William Dickey
Get the recipe:Lingonberry Linzer Plätzchen (German Lingonberry Linzer Cookies)
Still, I couldn’t shake the desire to make those cookies myself. While in high school, I had been inspired to start baking dozens of cookies every Christmas to give away to friends and neighbors, and I did learn then to make one popular Weihnachtsbäckerei—the Pfeffernüsse, a spiced cookie that packs a peppery punch. But, years later when I was a young mom, it was the discovery at a used bookstore ofThe Cooking of Germany, a cookbook published in 1969 as part of the Time-LifeFoods of the Worldseries, that gave me more insight into German Christmas culinary traditions and prompted me to make recipes that would give our daughter a literal taste of her ancestry. As the book’s author Nika Standen Hazelton writes, “… without Hausgebackenes (home-baked things), Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas—and without Christmas, Germany wouldn’t be Germany.”
The Cooking of Germanygave me detailed descriptions of regional German culinary culture, but it was Luisa Weiss' 2016 compendiumClassic German Bakingthat provided technique. This was where I began to grasp the importance of crafting a bunter Teller (“colorful plate”) filled with cookies of contrasting flavors and textures highlighting a wide variety of nuts, fruit and deeply flavored spices. The lengthy recipes were intimidating at first, until I decided to focus on the flavors and worry less about duplicating the recipes exactly—I am, after all, American, determined to put my own personal twist on time-honored traditions.
I addedcardamom-laced cookiesknown as Kardamom Plätzchen to my repertoire, dipped in dark chocolate and decorated with homemade candied grapefruit. Commercially made marzipan became a base for Bethmännchen, topped with crunchy Marcona almonds, until I became confident enough to make a walnut marzipan for anespresso-laced version. When I want to churn out Christmas cookies on the fly, hazelnuts in multiple forms make for an easy thumbprint cookie packed with depth of flavor, while a tart lingonberry jam fills a prettyLinzer Torte sandwich cookiesprinkled with crushed freeze-dried raspberries.
Get the recipe:Chocolate-Dipped Cardamom Cookies with Candied Grapefruit
The truth is that my Weihnachtsbäckerei might not pass the test in a traditional German home, but instead have become an ode to my mother-in-law: German in origin, American in sensibility. So even though I have never gotten a cookie recipe from Lotte, I still apply a lesson to my holiday baking that I learned from her—that is, the most important use of time is to spend it with the people you love.
Espresso Walnut Marzipan CookiesSalted Hazelnut Thumbprint CookiesPfeffernüsse (German Spice Cookies)
Espresso Walnut Marzipan Cookies
Salted Hazelnut Thumbprint Cookies
Pfeffernüsse (German Spice Cookies)
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