3000 readers a day
Mangiamaccheroni FXcuisine.com  

Burning Snowman Cookies (page 2 of 2)

 Home >> Recipes
Keywords ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦
Feedback27 comments - leave yours!
ZOOMLarger imagesPrint
Print
My springerle cookies made with an antique wooden mold of the snowman being devoured by the Sun, bringing the rebirth of nature. Mighty fine pagan dessert.
Page1  2  

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

Unwrap the dough ...

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

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.

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

Cut using a large knife or paddle.

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

And six new snowmen are born today.

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

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'.

Click to Zoom

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.

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

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?

Click to Zoom

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

Click to Zoom

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

I wish you all a good summer.


107565 views


Did you like this article? Leave me a comment or see my most popular articles.

Copyright FXcuisine 2024 - all rights reserved.
If you do this recipe at home please let me know how it worked for you by submitting a comment or send me a picture if you can. Thanks!



27 Comments

  • #1
  • Comment by david
"For whom the bell tolls" Love your writing:) And I am ready to melt some snowmen myself and enjoy a wonderful summer! Thanks for the recipe, I love springerle, but can only get them around Christmas here.

I've just found your site and think it's wonderful. These biscuits look amazing and if only I ate eggs and had a pagan biscuit stamp I would certainly make some! Looking forward to reading the rest of your work. Thanks for your tips on Dandelion Syrup too, that's the way I found you.
  • #3
  • Answered by fx
David, I think making the springerle and finding the wooden molds is actually more fun than eating them!
  • #4
  • Answered by fx
Manda, I think the eggs are more of a problem than the pagan stamps, which you can buy as plastic reproductions all over the Internet. I like your own article about Dandelion and wish you fun in France!
Wow! I can't believe it doesn't have any butter!(How rare in Fxcuisine!:)) It's the first time I have ever heard of this cookie and it's a must try for me! They look so crispy and delicious~ Thanks for sharing with us, FX~
Beautiful pictures, as always!  I especially like the reflection-heavy ones near the top.
  • #7
  • Comment by Paul Mckenna
I looked on Ebay and there were 10 wooden examples including rolling pins all at affordable prices.

Great stuff. This is a lovely recipe to involve children, give them a sense of heritage, appreciate how important spring is.

Thanks

Paul
  • #8
  • Answered by fx
Cheese Puff, welcome back, indeed no butter in those cookies. They can be a bit too crispy for the good of your teeth though, maybe best dip them in hot milk!
  • #9
  • Answered by fx
Vicki, I love reflective objects on dark backgrounds, but they certainly reflect everything else in the background!
  • #10
  • Answered by fx
Paul, there are all sorts of online shops that sell Springerle molds. Most have rather tacky designs, watch what you buy!
  • #11
  • Comment by reclusegrl
Everyone should have a snowman burning festival.  It is not just your recipes which are astounding.
Call me sentimental, although I am ready for Spring/Summer...The snowman looks impaled by his broom and looks rather like a marshmallow being fed to the flames! Is nature always so cruel?
  • #13
  • Comment by karmel
Awesome!love your Miele oven.  We have them too and they are the best!!Can't wait to try these...I will eat snowman first.
  • #14
  • Comment by Luke
I love old Pagan traditions, especially those that haven't become too diluted with time. They're so much more human and earthly than traditions introduced by both Christianity and modern consumerism alike.Wonderful post!
Great recipe and I love the way you write!  Will have to give these a try!  Thanks
  • #16
  • Answered by fx
Next year I'll try to show you the whole snowman-burning festival in Zurich!
  • #17
  • Answered by fx
Callipygia, the snowman sure gets the raw end of the deal and the business end of the stick. But if you look at the 1973 movie The Wicker Man, you'll see that it's not much fun visiting inside the Wicker Man on celebration day.
  • #18
  • Answered by fx
Karmel, when I finally upgraded by 18-year-old oven whose door had to be held in place with adhesive tape, it was like an ephiphany. Two decades of progress in one go!
  • #19
  • Answered by fx
Luke, I share your interest for Pagan traditions. As for their being more humane, I recently visited the largest Helvet (Celts) burial site ever found, and some of the remains are rather difficult to reconcile to present days values, as empty of any religion as one can make them. Things could get really hard core.
  • #20
  • Answered by fx
Gary, thanks for visiting and hold on for more of the same!
  • #21
  • Comment by Luke
Well, I said human, like it concerned human day-to-day issues, rather than the Christian value of waiting for an afterlife or modern consumerist values of vying to acquire the latest and the greatest.

Humane is a different story. Those certainly were some brutal times indeed.
FX, as an anthropology student, I really like how you give us the historical and cultural background to your recipes. And as always, wonderful photos. It looks like you artistically spread the flour around in that first one-is that the case?
  • #23
  • Answered by fx
Lyra, thanks for your appreciation! There is much to enjoy for the anthropologically minded pastry chef, perhaps you might read Le Diable en sucre, a book by a French anthropologist about pagan cookies across Europe. Yes I tried to make a nice pattern with the flour, French chefs call this 'fraiser' or 'to strawberry' literally, and there is even a precise gesture supposed to guarantee an even layer of flour!
  • #24
  • Comment by Leon
The cookies puff upwards? Awesome. Remind me to try them somedays. Greetings from Singapore!
  • #25
  • Answered by fx
Leon, thanks for visiting!
This is really interesting - I have my great-grandmother's springerle board and have been experimenting with springerle recipes.  A lot of the recipes I have swear that you must use baker's ammonia/hartshorn instead of regular baking powder, but yours seem perfectly fine without it.  I may have to try this one :)
  • #27
  • Answered by fx
Sasha, thanks for your visit and I wish you fun with your great-grandmaīs springerle mold. Indeed if you have bakerīs ammonia thatīs the way to go, but if you donīt youīll get good results with regular baking powder.

 Tell me what you think!

Write a comment below to let me know what you think about my article or ask any question you may have.

 (required)

 E-Mail (required, will not be displayed)

 (optional)



Please follow me on Instagram for lots of new content every week!
Francois

Subscribe and you'll never miss an article:
or RSS.







Sponsored links: DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript