Technically we're a little out of season for pfeffernuesse right now, but I learned something interesting about it this morning, so I'm going to make my first ever batch tonight. For some reason I always thought that pfeffernuesse was peppermint flavored. I guess this makes more sense than the truth, which is that they are flavored with pepper and other spices! I have never tried pfeffernuesse, because every time I looked at them I couldn't help but think that a hard peppermint flavored cookie covered with powdered sugar would be gross. Luckily I was wrong on at least part of that assumption!
Pfeffernuesse is a fairly ancient cookie, and is native to Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. They are a traditional Christmas cookie, and are often baked for the "Sinterklaas," which is a holiday feast where children receive gifts from a precursor to Santa Claus.
Saint Nicholas dates back to the late 200s, and although I wasn't able to find any specific dates for pfeffernuesse, I'm guessing they came along not long after! This has all the hallmarks of a medieval recipe - it's hard (thus easy to store and travel), and it's flavored with the same spice mixture that people used as a food preservative for sausages and such.
Pfeffernuesse look quite a lot like the "Greek cookies" which are semi-traditional in my family. Except that Greek cookies are shaped like a sickle moon, whereas pfeffernuesse are little lumps. And apparently pfeffernuesse are quite hard!
In fact, all the recipes I consulted advise you to leave the dough out overnight, in order to give it the proper pre-staled texture. Apparently the traditional pfeffernuesse recipe calls for you to bake the cookies, then tuck them away in a closet for a month or so, in order to harden them up even further.
My second surprise (the first being that it's a pepper flavored cookie) was that the recipe contains no butter. I read through it three times, trying to figure out how much butter to set out to come to room temperature. I kept thinking "Surely I am overlooking the butter," but nope - no butter! That was my first hint that this was going to be an unusual cookie. (And a crunchy one!)
Your success at pfeffernusse depends partly upon your ability to whip eggs into a nice froth. A quick tip on that (one which none of the recipes I've found mentions) is that you will want your eggs to be at room temperature. Room temperature eggs whip up the best.
Traditionally pfeffernuesse is flavored with lemon zest and citron (candied fruit, which you may know best from fruit cake). Some more modern pfeffernuesse recipes call for ingredients like candied ginger, white wine, coffee, and other interesting flavors. Some recipes even use a chocolate base, but this seems like it's trying to make pfeffernuesse into something it isn't. One variation creates a dark cookie, using molasses and cocoa powder to make something that's more like gingerbread than the traditional pfeffernusse.
Why not make some for a Christmas in July celebration? Or, as in my case, an It's Thursday Night And I'm Kind Of Bored celebration!
Recipes
Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user platoisboring
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