Burning Snowman Cookies

Since time immemorial people have baked breads and biscuits shaped like pagan symbols. For a couple centuries we have lost the original meaning, if there ever was one explicit meaning, of these bones, two headed babies and giant edible phalluses. But they are still all around us. In my parts, we bake small hard cookies shaped with wooden forms passed on like family heirloom. In the South of Germany and the Swiss-German speaking part of Switzerland, they call them springerle. To welcome the sun back onto our land, I made a batch of springtime cookies using a unique mold I bought from an antique dealer.

Springerle
2 eggs
250 grams / 0.5 lb flour
250 grams / 0.5 lb confectioner's sugar
1 gram baking powder
Vanillin or vanilla sugar or lemon oil or anise oil
A kitchen mixer
A springerle mold
About three days

We will need to cream the sugar and egg for a very long time - 20 minutes. Old recipes called for your four oldest kids to beat the eggs in turn, but nowadays a kitchen machine is definitely cheaper.

Break the eggs...

... then sift the sugar over the eggs, like snow on a field of sunflowers.

Add the vanilla or other flavoring, then beat over high speed for 20 minutes.

Leaving the frothed eggs in the bowl, add half the flour, sifted with the baking powder, and continue to mix until fully absorbed.

Continue to add the rest of the flour by hand, working the dough on a table until it makes a smooth and relatively hard ball. Cover in foil and let it rest in the fridge overnight.

Springerle molds are about symbols and figuration. There is nothing really artistic in them, but the farmers who carved these molds during wintertime knew precisely what they wanted them to print. This one (picture above) show a sun with fiery rays like tongues of fires melting a snowman. We had our yearly snowman-burning celebration last weekend in Zurich - same spirit.

The Bööög on his pire during the 2008 Sechseläuten, courtesy of Clemens Orth.

A last smoke?

I will also try out this other, more mundane, springerle mold with a bell, a pear, two flowers and a castle.

Flour your working space. I use rice flour but any really fine flour will do.

Unwrap the dough ...

... then flatten with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 10mm / 0.4''.

Firmly press the mold onto the dough with the heel of your hand. I wanted to write 'press with all your weight', but I don't know how much you weigh.

Remove. Not the nicest snowman in the land, but it won't be our last.

Continue, trying to avoid too much deformation in neighboring springerle as the dough moves sideways when you press down.

Cut using a large knife or paddle.

Beautiful work. You feel like a druid of sorts preparing some sacred food! And that's before drinking any Kirschwasser.

Assemble the remaining dough to make another dough which you'll flatten again.

And six new snowmen are born today.

Recycle the remains on the usual way - snowmen born from the ashes of other snowmen.

Now the snowmen need to go to bed for the big day tomorrow. Lay them on a piece of baking paper glued to a baking tray with four drops of butter in the corners. Leave in a warm, well ventilated place for the designs to harden while drying. If we baked our snowmen right now, they would just melt before their time is up, contradicting the medieval proverb 'Old snowmen don't die, they just fade away'.

The next day, wet the back (unprinted, flat surface) with a little water, then place in a cold oven and increase temperature to 200 °C / 400°F. Bake for 20 minutes, turn the oven off but leave the cookies inside for a further 20 minutes.

There we are - a tray full of snowmen and a bell. For whom does the bell toll?

The bell tolls for our friend the snowman. His time on this earth is up. The sun's mighty rays now make him melt. His demise will be the start of the rebirth of our land. But will the sun really come back and raise grass, trees, flowers and crops from the earth?

If you eat it sunny side up, a summer of rain will drown upon you.

'Eat the snowman before the snowman eats you', as we say in Switzerland.

I wish you all a good summer.