First Day of Christmas Cookies Pfeffernusse

     I am going into Christmas cookie baking mode. Each year I try to find the most interesting cookies to make up baskets for the people we care about. We have some amazing friends. My husband and I struggle with disabilities – he is in a wheelchair due to a combination of work injuries and post polio syndrome, and I have a lot of difficulty standing or walking due to my knees.

     Anyway, our neighbors and friends help us out by mowing our lawn all summer, raking and bagging our leaves in fall and snow-blowing and shoveling us out in winter. Judy often helps out when we have bad days by bringing dinner over, and when we go away, she has a warm meal waiting for us upon our return. I don’t think you find too many friends like this these days! Even our 76 year old neighbor buys us subs when the church in town has a fund raiser –all we are able to do for her is take out her garbage and pick up or mail things; as I said amazing friends who all help each other when they can.  I used to have dreams of opening my own store with handmade soaps, scrubs and bath bombes, but after taking a business course realized I was too out of the way for it to fly. Then I became allergic to the scents, and the dream went down the drain. I still like to make soap occasionally, so one day in the future I will probably blog about that.

      I am a dreamer by nature – have you ever seen the movie with Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler about two guys who work in a morgue? It's called Night Shift. Michael Keaton is hysterical in it – he calls himself an idea man and keeps a little cassette recorder with him at all times to record his ideas when they pop into his head – I am a little like that – only I get my ideas when I am supposed to be sleeping and end up with insomnia trying to figure out if I can do these things or not!

     Anyway, now that you know a little about me, on with the cookies! A big thank you, by the way, to Judith Hannemann, the Midnight Baker http://bakeatmidnite.com/ for taking this beautiful photo.

Pfefferneuse

So I’m thinking the best cookie to make first for Christmas is Pfefferneuse.; my great grandmother and grandmother used to make this every Christmas and I remember taking a few of them with their powdery sugar and just delighting in them. The ones you buy in the store are a sad replacement.  The big secret if you are a novice to this is that Pfefferneuse needs a few weeks to become soft, so if you are thinking of making them around the 20^th of December, you are in for a big disappointment, because they will be hard as a rock and not delectable at all!

I have a big problem with letting things grab my attention and more than once have made a dish only to find after it’s in the oven for a bit, that I forgot an important ingredient – does that happen to you? So this year I have been keeping a pencil with my recipes and marking off the ingredients as I add them. Hopefully that will keep me from frustrating mistakes. I am not a novice baker, but I am a scattered person at best.

Pefferneuse needs quite a bit of time in the fridge before you bake it, so making it in the evening and baking it next day is really handy. My plan is to make several refrigerator friendly recipes, leave them overnight and bake them the next day while I am making my next batches of cookies. In theory, this should work….time will tell. Make sure you take out all the things that need to soften like butter and cream cheese well before you start your baking spree.

Honey and molasses make one part of the flavor and a bunch of ground spices make up the other. If you find other recipes for this on the web, make sure they have cardamom in them. Cardamom is used in a lot of German and Scandinavian cooking and has a very distinct flavor. The tough thing is finding a store that sells it. I went to my local price chopper, shop rite and Wal-Mart. All I found was one of those 3-4 ounce bottles for over $11.00. Really? Trust me, unless you are making Scandinavian breads every other day, you are never going to use this up! Then I thought about our local health food store and decided to try that – sure enough, they had some – Cardamon is $42 a pound, so I was grateful to only have to put a teaspoon in my little baggie – cost 83 cents – much better than buying that bottle. 

In a non- reactive pot, combine the molasses, honey and butter stir over low heat until the butter has melted.

When you melt the butter in the molasses and honey, make sure it doesn’t come to a boil, it will taste burned!

The mixture will become thin, just be patient.

 Remove from heat, transfer it to a large bowl, and let it cool until it is lukewarm.

While it is cooling, sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, spices and salt. Once the honey mixture is lukewarm, beat in beaten egg and anise extract. Mix well, then gradually stir in dry ingredients to make a stiff dough.

Make a log and wrap it in saran wrap and leave in fridge at least 5 hours, or as i did, overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, line baking sheets.

Let the dough warm up just a little, and dust your hands with flour. Then make balls about 1 inch in diameter and place on baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake for 11-14 minutes, cool thoroughly and roll in confectioner's sugar.

Store in an airtight container, separating layers with wax paper. Like fruitcake, these cookies get better and softer as they age. If desired, before serving, they may be rolled once again in confectioner's sugar - I always liked them double rolled -part of the fun as a kind, was liking off the sugar!!!

Recipe for Pfefferneuse

1/4 cup molasses

1 1/4 cups honey

1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut in pieces

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 TBSP unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. ground cardamon

1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp. allspice

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

Scant 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

pinch of salt

1 large egg, slightly beaten

1/4 tsp. pure anise extract

confectioner's sugar for dusting 

In a non- reactive pot, combine the molasses, honey and butter stir over low heat until the butter has melted.

When you melt the butter in the molasses and honey, make sure it doesn’t come to a boil, it will taste burned!

The mixture will become thin, just be patient.

 Remove from heat, transfer it to a large bowl, and let it cool until it is lukewarm.

While it is cooling, sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, spices and salt. Once the honey mixture is lukewarm, beat in beaten egg and anise extract. Mix well, then gradually stir in dry ingredients to make a stiff dough

Make a log and wrap it in saran wrap and leave in fridge at least 5 hours, or as i did, overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, line baking sheets.

Let the dough warm up just a little, and dust your hands with flour. Then make balls about 1 inch in diameter and place on baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake for 11-14 minutes, cool thoroughly and roll in confectioner's sugar.

Store in an airtight container, separating layers with wax paper. Like fruitcake, these cookies get better and softer as they age. If desired, before serving, they may be rolled once again in confectioner's sugar

The unrest in Belfast and what I learned while I was there

 

     I was excited to see Belfast when I went to Ireland in 2019. I knew I wanted to go to the Titanic museum and see the city, but I had no idea what Belfast was really like. While on my tour with PaddyWagon, only 4 of us opted for the trip to Northern Ireland, so we were pretty free to ask about seeing things not necessarily scheduled. Our driver suggested a Black Cab tour once we got to Belfast because it was the best way to learn about the more recent history of the city. We all agreed and set off on our tour.

     The driver was a local and very knowledgeable. He told us about all the problems back in the 60s when there were frequent bombings on both sides and what the problem stemmed from. While most people think it was a religious war, that wasn't the main problem. The  key issue was the consitutional status of Northern Ireland. Protestants were Unionists and wanted to remain a part of England, Catholics were largely Irish Nationalists who wanted Northern Ireland to be free like the rest of the country. Both sides were bombing and shooting at each other over those years until it all came to a head on Bloody Sunday Jan 30, 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 civilians during a protest march in Derry..  We all remembered the stories from that time, but of course being in America all we heard about was the bloodshed and Catholics and Protestants were fighting. I know I certainly didn't truly understand why.  There is a "peace"  wall erected between the two parts of the city - the Catholic side and the Protestant side. The wall was erected to stem the bloodshed and keep the warring factions apart. It was hard for us to understand how it could happen. 

 The wall still stands with large gates separating the two sides. On the weekend, only one gate is left open for people to go into the other area at 10 am Sunday and it closes at 3pm. It opens again at 6:30 am Monday morning along with all the other gates so people can get to their places of employment and closes again at 6:30 pm. 

     Our driver first drove us around the Catholic area and explained when the city started to build housing projects in Belfast, the Catholic side only got housing where they had a communal bathroom in a building outside of their housing. Since many families lived in these buildings, it was difficult for all. It reminded me of the council housing in Poplar, London as they initially had the same type of housing (If you watch Call the Midwife, you will know what I am talking about.) Meanwhile, on the Protestant side of town, the housing was clearly much better and each home had its own bathroom. The stores were nicer, the parks were nicer- and the Catholics could feel the the slight for sure. I need maybe to back up a little into Irish history here. Ireland was colonized by England and in the 1600's they sent Protestant families from Scotland and England into Ireland to take over the land and make ''plantations" which were clearly better for the  poor Irish Catholics who couldn't take care of themselves. The biggest settlement was in the area we now call Northern Ireland which is still under the rule of England. The two largest cities, Belfast and Derry had many of the same problems. The ruling English were called Orangemen and still are. Derry/Londonderry is a walled city where they also have a Catholic side and a Protestant side. I visited there as well, but that's for another day. Of course most of you know how hard the Irish fought for their independence, but at the treaty made with the English in 1921, they had to concede Northern Ireland to the English. The rest of Ireland is a free state and country of its own. 

This is  the Catholic side. Then he drove us to the Protestant side and there really was a difference!  I guess problems like segregation happens more than we would like to admit. 

They built the Peace wall to keep the two neighborhoods apart. It is interesting to see all the paintings on the wall. Initially they were all Irish oriented. Now they showcase places that still hold people down. You may not agree with all the places they paint their artwork for, but you certainly understand the meaning behind it all. 

     When I was there, I could fell the undercurrent of anger running through the city, it was that palpable, so it doesn't surprise me to read the recent news, but it does make me sad. Will we ever learn to respect each other and our differences. I think of my family coming here from Germany, Italy and Ireland. I am a third generation American. It was not easy for any of my immigrant families to get their toe hold in America and create good lives for themselves and their descendants. There was prejuduce - the old "No Irish need apply" , kids calling my older cousins dirty Nazis during WWII. Did you know they had internment camps for Germans here in America during that time? Most people don't because all they ever heard about were the camps for Japanese people. And the Italians in Little Italy in Manhatten, poorest of the poor eking out a living as shoemakers, tailors, barbers. I think every immigrant who ever stepped foot in America had to come here, learn a new language, send their kids to school to learn to read and write in English, and they were grateful for the opportunity, but prejudice of all types carves out a place to gain a foothold and we as people can be so blind to it.