Christmas treats ()
Chocolates, candies, cookies and baked goods fill grocery store aisles and bakery shelves, tempting even the healthiest of eaters to succumb to a sugary snack. Take a look at some of the wonderful products just begging to be taken home, gifted or sampled by you and yours.
Dominostein: This chocolate-covered cube doesn’t give a clue as to what hides within. Taking a bite reveals a gingerbread cake-like bottom and a layer of jam, topped by marzipan. Its generous chocolate glaze can be made of milk, dark or white chocolate.
Germknödel: This sweet dumpling made of a yeasty dough resembles a pale, oversized bun. Inside is found a tangy jam, and it’s commonly served with poppy seeds and sugar or a warm vanilla cream sauce. It has a close cousin, the Dampfnudeln, which is made of much the same dough but is prepared differently.
Lebkuchen: Gingerbread cookies are round, slightly chewy and covered with a sugar or chocolate glaze. The cream of the crop is a type of gingerbread cookie known as Elisen. These cookies contain a high quantity of ground nuts, usually almonds, in place of flour. The “Bratapfel” flavor is one of the more recent additions to the types of Lebkuchen sold in supermarkets.
Marzipan-Kartoffeln: These look like tiny potatoes—hence the name—but they’re really just bits of the sugar and almond paste known as marzipan, rolled into balls and thinly coated with cocoa powder.
Spekulatius: These shortcrust cookies are flat, crunchy and come in different festive shapes, from snowflakes to windmills or images associated with the story of St. Nicholas. Within this category of cookies are found several subsets, such as the Butterspekulatius, reminiscent of English shortbread; Mandelspekulatius, made with almond flour, or the most popular, Gewürzspekulatius, spiced with cardamom, clove and cinnamon.
Spritzgebäck: Spritz cookies derive their name from the German word “spritzen,” which means “to inject” or “to spray.” The squishy uncooked dough is put into a special type of cookie press and ejected onto a tray for baking. A meat grinder or a piping bag can stand in for the fancy tool in less well-equipped kitchens. The resulting cookie crumbles easily and melts in the mouth.
Stollen: This sweet, cake-like bread contains candied lemon and orange peel, nuts and raisins and is dusted with confectioner’s sugar. Also known as Christstollen, its shape is supposed to remind us of Baby Jesus, swaddled in a blanket. Add-ins to the basic recipe include marzipan, nuts, poppy seeds, quark and other ingredients. A Dresdner Stollen is a label applied only to a certain type of Stollen prepared to specific quality standards and baked in or around the city of Dresden.
Zimtsterne: Cinnamon stars are slightly chewy and perfectly spiced cookies shaped like a five-pointed star and finished off with a thick white glaze. What makes them so delicious is their high content of ground almonds or hazelnuts, which stands in for most, if not all, of the flour.
