How are you all feeling today? Any better? No? Me neither. But it's December 2nd and the first Advent has already come and gone and so I have a little distraction for all of us. Drumroll……
BAKING.
Surprise!
But actually, it really does kind of work, at least momentarily. It keeps you busy, and off the internet, not just while you're plannning which cookies to make, and writing ingredient lists, and going grocery shopping. But also while you mix and beat and chop and bake. Then you get to assemble your masses of cookies, in cellophone bags or aluminum tins or perhaps little cardboard boxes wrapped up with string. And we haven't even gotten to the part where you have to decide whom to give the cookies too! You're looking at at least a week's worth of distraction in total. At least! Pretty good, huh? I'll say.
So let's do another giveaway, shall we? Let's get our minds off the end of the world. Leave me a comment here listing what your favorite Christmas baking list looks like and I'll pick a winner on Sunday. The winner gets a signed (and personalized) copy of Classic German Baking, an assortment of German baking ingredients (candied citrus peels, poppy seeds, marzipan, various raising agents, and mixed Lebkuchen spice) plus a jar of my homemade Pflaumenmus, which will hopefully motivate the winner (and at least a few other of you?) to bake the Lebkuchen-Powidltatschkerln – little rye cookie pockets filled with plum jam – in the Christmas chapter. I love those little babies – we discovered them in a magazine while on a "research" trip to Austria last year. They're soft and tangy and spicy and delicious. Spread the word!
(If anyone is wondering, my baking list would include those plum jam rye cookies, nutty Spekulatius, Pfeffernüsse, Basler Brunsli and Springerle, which I'll be making with Joanie next week and – if all goes according to plan – filming! In some capacity. We'll see. It'll probably be terrible. But also hopefully a little useful? Oh! And I've committed to the most insane thing ever: providing enough homemade slabs of Lebkuchen to make gingerbread houses with Hugo and FOUR of his little friends. Yeah. I don't know what I was thinking either. Hold me?)
In other news, the Washington Post recently included Classic German Baking in their round-up of the year's best cookbooks, writing "This overdue guide is a happy marriage of European craft and American sensibilities." Which made me want to marry the Washington Post in a happy marriage of my own.
On Food52's gorgeously illustrated guide to global holiday sweets, I was thrilled to get to contribute a little piece on Elisenlebkuchen (with recipe).
On Tastebook, I was interviewed about Classic German Baking, plus asked to talk a little bit about the three cookbooks I'm currently cooking from.
Deutsche Welle interviewed me on some of the nitty-gritty aspects of writing the cookbook, including my recipe for Brezeln (soft pretzels).
The loveliest cookbook store in Seattle, Book Larder, asked me 11 questions about food memories, my food heroes and favorite cookbooks.
But the most important thing I wanted to write about today is actually about the biggest complaint I've gotten on the cookbook so far: the relatively low number of food photos. For a variety of reasons, it just wasn't feasible for every recipe, or even every other recipe, to get its own photo. I did my very best to write the recipes as tightly and carefully as I could, so that home bakers would get good results without a photo guiding them. But I understand the frustration of some. So I've put together a list of every recipe in the book with an accompanying photograph – where I could, this will get updated going forward – and have posted them on a separate page which is accessible by clicking on the "Classic German Baking Photos" link under the book image that you see over in the right sidebar. It's a little clunky, but I hope it satisfies the need for visuals in the book and can be a helpful resource for all of you. Feel free to let your friends who have the book know about this. Thank you!
UPDATE: Nora is the winner and has been notified. Thank you so much for participating! Happy baking to all – you are an inspiration!
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300 responses to “A Classic German Baking Giveaway, plus Classic German Baking Photos!”
my holiday baking list typically includes jam thumbprints, spritz cookies, and classic chocolate chip cookies. But I’m excited to try some new recipes!
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Hi Luisa! Your cookbook is amazing and I can’t wait to keep cooking from it. So far I’ve made Bremer Kürbisbrot and Eisenbahnschnitten. Both turned out delightful– my mom said the schnitten were the best cookies she’d ever eaten. My Christmas baking this year includes Elisenlebkuchen, spingerle, divinity, toffee, and those chocolate cookies you roll in powdered sugar before baking so they get all crinkely. Happy holidays to you and yours!
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I am making fruitcake for my dad. There will be Santa Lucia buns come December 13th. Lots of gingerbread and pies as well.
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My Christmas bang list includes lebkuchen (which I’ve been making every Christmas since I found a reliable recipe years ago, and since they’ve always been my children’s favourite – but now that I’ve learnt via you that the dough ought to rest for two months I THINK there might be some th wrong with my recipe). And small pasta from ma stars than get a coat of fuol-colored icing, also a children’s favourite
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My holiday baking list includes gingerbread…..a favorite. Thanks for the giveaway!
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I mean baking list! Blast the auto correct haha haha!
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We always make chocolate crinkles – I add a little more bittersweet cocoa to them so they’re more grown up! Looking forward to making your eisenbahnschnitten! They look delicious.
Our biggest family tradition is to have “pizza Focaccia” from Liguria bakery in San Francisco – my grandparents used to bring it down to us in LA every Christmas. As they’re now in their 90’s, I decided to “replicate” the recipe, using your version of the Saltie’s Focaccia, and my mom’s homemade tomato sauce. I roughly chopped scallions and mixed it in the sauce before baking, and it turned out perfectly when we tested it on Thanksgiving! My family was thrilled – thanks for allowing us to continue such a big tradition of ours! Hope your holidays are relaxing and full of joy.
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I usually make sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) for Chanukah, but this year I was also thinking of making stollen to celebrate our German heritage. I think my Dad would love that.
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Growing up in Central Kansas (heavy on German & Mennonite ancestry) we always have “peppernuts” (as we call them) at Christmas, and every family has their own recipe (some with anise, some without, some with dried fruit, some with actual nuts too) My recipe is pretty simple, and I can’t wait to see how it compares to yours! We also bake great-Grandma’s sour cream sugar cookies & cinnamon rolls, zweiback for Christmas dinner (the soft-roll version) and now after having lived in Northern NM for a few years, also on my list are biscochitos (from a recipe which I got from a former co-worker, who said it was her family’s recipe for generations).
Honestly, even if I don’t win this giveaway, I’ve put your cookbook on my Christmas list..and I can’t wait to have a chance to use it!
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I never know what I’m going to bake until the last minute, but in the past I have baked royal icing decorated sugar cookies, rugelach, spritz, coconut macaroons, thumbprints, and gingerbread men. Looking forward to trying something new this year, perhaps something German. 🙂
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My top choice is always Spritz, and everything from there is up in the air! 🙂 This year I’m thinking about shortbread, and anything that catches my eye from the new Dorie’s Cookies book!
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I am baking a chapon farci with chestnut and foie gras ( my mom recipe ) and my new challenge this year is the buche aux marrons 🙂 Will see how it will turn out!
Love your books, Marie
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I want to try the Oblaten-Lebkuchen!
-Cranberry Lime tart
-probably some breads
more sour cream and chocolate chip cookies since we’ve already run out (also I’m amazed someone else has a sour cream cookie recipe! how cool!)
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Back in Germany I used to make everyone’s favorite cookies. My dad’s are “Schokoladenbrot” which is a nearly flourless version of brownies full of almonds and choc, followed by Spritzgebäck for my mum and Vanillekipferl for myself. Yum. In good baking years we would also add some Elisenlebkuchen which had to set over night on the windowsill of the bedroom and were the best Lebkuchen ever.
This weekend I will bake in Boston since everyone wants German cookies for Christmas. What else! I will still make Vanillekipferl for myself, followed by a simply fruitbread for my British friend’s dad, tiny buttery star cookies with a sugary eggwhite crust (everyone’s favorite), followed by nice and simple currant cookies. I might then try to make some buttery sour cream cookies (new this year!) with Hagelzucker decoration. Since those are big plans even for a German trained in cookie baking since she was four, I’ll probably exhaustedly collapse on my bed with a piece of good cheese and bread and a nice book. Obviously it would be great to read “Classic German Baking” but I am likely ranking 571 on the library waiting list :). I tried to resist and buy the book since my shelf for food related books is overcrowded (not sure how long I can keep resisting)but it is totally acceptable to participate in a give away, right? Happy and successful baking!
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We always made spritz, Russian tea cakes, and plain old sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles on top when I was growing up. I’m German on all side of my family and I speak German as well so I can’t wait to learn the recipes from your book to bake for my family that I’m newly married into!
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My holiday baking list always includes something with salted caramel (last year, it was black sesame cookies with a salted miso caramel). This year, I’m also hoping to bake some gingerbread and have a cookie decorating party with my kiddo and a few of her friends.
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I will be making lots of toffee and caramels but for my baking, I’ll be working on a crisp sugar cookie, a gingerbread shortbread cookie, Swedish Nut cookies, cinnamon rolls and some no-knead cloverleaf rolls.
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For the past few years I have mostly skipped my holiday cookie baking ritual. My kids were young, one is allergic to eggs and nuts (tough to leave out of cookies), my husband could take them or leave them, and then my mother, who was always my Christmas cookie role model (like making 12 different kinds a year) was diagnosed with diabetes. It just felt like there wasn’t a point anymore. But this year I’m determined to DO IT ANYWAY!! Mostly for the same distraction reasons that you mentioned! My usuals are hazelnut-espresso biscotti, Russian tea cakes, double chocolate peppermint, spritz or cut out sugar cookies, and egg-free gingerbread men for the kiddos to help make and decorate!
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Congrats on the book, I hope to get my grubby hands on it soon. Our holiday cookies: Peppermint Pigs (a cutout sandwich cookie of barely sweet dark chocolate wafers and mint icing), THOSE cookies from the Ottolenghi book (we skip the glaze put red sprinkles on them, if you can believe that, but the crunch is kind of nice), Pinwheel Rugelach, and rollout ginger cookies for decorating. Can’t wait to add something from your book to the list!
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Having been born in Swaziland, educated in South Africa and living in Portugal, I would need a little bit of each country in my shopping list plus a little extra. I would get traditional Christmas fruit cake (without the icing), day old bread to make something called “fatias douradas” (a bit like french toast), pumpkin for pumpkin fritters and maybe a stollen.
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Excited to make spritz cookies with my new-to-me cookie press (it’s an ancient mirro one that was unearthed in a spring cleaning of my mother-in-law’s laundry room). I used to go to my friend’s house every Christmas to make them with her family and I can’t wait to start that tradition with my three year old. Also on the list are almond crescents (my husband’s Italian grandmother’s classic receipe) and cookies that my sister and I have been making since we were kids. The recipe in our cookie cookbook was called “Viennese Jam Rounds,” but a quick search of the internet reveals this is not a real thing. It’s a stiff almond cookie dough that is rolled out, cut in circles, gets a dollop of raspberry or apricot jam, and latticed with two strips of cookie dough (kind of like a stained glass window). I’m asking for classic german baking for Christmas, which may or may not reveal the name and archetypal recipe for these cookies??
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I’m finding it hard to feel Christmassy this year (things are not going well, I’m afraid), and so I’m having a baking weekend to try to make myself feel better. I’m going to make proper gingerbread cookies, if I can find the molasses substitute here in Berlin-I think it’s rubensirop? I might also make a Black Forest Cake, so I’ll be needing cherries and cream along with my butter and ginger and rubensirop. And I’m going to package them all up in a nice tin and take them to church on Sunday to feed the kids, so that I don’t end up eating all of my baking by myself.
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My holiday baking list includes my mom’s gingersnap cookies, angel food candy dipped in chocolate, chocolate chip meringues and a batch of basler leckerli (a recipe I got from the mother of the German boy I dated in college!) They are such a pain to roll out, but the reward in the end is definitely worth it.
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Spritz cookies and stollen
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Gingerbread and shortbread cookies. The kids love decorating them!
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Thank you for the giveaway, Luisa! I’ll be baking gingerbread (I need to find a new recipe), marzipan cookies and sesame lace cookies for sure, but probably something else as well. A cake or something big.
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I think I’m going to make a traditional german cookie from the book to send to my German Dad. And basically work my way through all the yeasted cakes just for me 🙂
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Thank you for the chance to win. On my baking list so far is rum cake, spritzer cookies, and tea cakes.
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It’s not on MY baking list, but every year my father makes a Linzertorte for each of us and sends it in the mail. It is not truly Christmas until that box arrives. I cut it into quarters and freeze it so I can savor it for as long as possible!
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Spritz cookies, thumbprints with red currant jam, and a batch of semlor—plus you’ve sold me on Lebkuchen-Powidltatschkerln!
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My daughter and I have a tradition of making a Yule log every year. Also, gingerman cutouts and a mincemeat pie for husband.
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I’d love to make homemade cream puffs, chocolate truffles and some kind of enriched sweet bread. But with my crazy holiday work schedule I don’t know if I have the time.
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My list would include bouchon, pfeffernusse, and ginger reindeer instead of ginger men for, preferably with, my grandsons.
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I have Beetmännchen and Dominosteine on my list!
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Dear Luisa, I am swiss, and my favorite christmas cookies are Zimtsterne, Brunsli, Lebkuchen und Schoggikugeln.
And most important, what I want to tell you, there is a family tradition, to bake Configuetsli (confi = jam), (guetsli = cookies), following a secret recipe from my great grandmother. My grandfather now aged 100, tells everyone that he married my grandmother, now aged 95, only because she made these incredibly tasty Configuetsli. The are made with a kind of Lebkuchenteig, with a lot of christmassy spices, filled with a lot of berry jam, and topped with lemon glaze.
I loved your first book, and I would really enjoy to try the second ;-))
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My list includes some standards, like sugar cookies, crescent moon cookies, gingerbread men, and peanut butter kisses, but boy oh boy would I love to add some german items to that list! Thanks so much for the giveaway!
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Hi Luisa! My Christmas baking repertoire is thanks to you! Back in 2012 you posted recipes for Arkansas Fig Fruitcake and Ottolenghi’s Spice Cookies, and I’ve baked them every year since. In fact, the Spice Cookies have kind of a following and I make multiple batches.
I borrowed Classic German Baking from the library, and the first thing I want to bake is the Marmorierter Mohnkuchen – I love poppy seeds, I love marbled cakes. I watched you make Kranzerkuchen on Food52, and saw Deb’s pictures making strudel on smittenkitchen and I want to make those too. Not sure this all can fit under Holiday Baking though, I might be running out of time.
Anyway, I am so glad you’ve posted more recipe photos, because I often pick recipes to try when I see something I like. And it gives me a thrill when my finished product looks like the picture!
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I always tend to bite off more than I can chew at the holidays when it comes to baking, but the years when I managed to fit it all in looked like this:
Several loaves of cranberry bread for giving (recipe from the Silver Palate Good Times cookbook. OMG, will we ever stop cooking from those books?!)
Cognac Sugarplums (boozy little cookies that keep very well. Also from Silver Palate Good Times)
Egg nog pound cake made in one of my fancy bundt pans. Recipe from an old Williams Sonoma catalog.
That’s the list of baking for others. Here’s what I bake to keep at home:
As many cookies as I can from The Christmas Cookie book (such an indispensable book. https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Cookie-Book-Lou-Seibert/dp/0811830950) But especially the lemon sables and almond tiles.
Martha Stewart’s Dowager Duchess fruitcake. (Sounds loony, but it’s amazing. It also requires weeks or even months of dousing with booze and I did not get on it, so we’re out of luck this year.)
I’m dying to try the Anisbrot in Classic German Baking, as well as just about everything else, really. My 11-year-old daughter and I plan to work our way through it over Christmas vacation.
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Cut out cookies
Snickerdoodles
Lemon Raisin cookies (trust me, they are AWESOME!)
We used to make these growing up
Pizzelles (lost the recipe 😦 )
Potica (I don’t have enough people to feed this to – lol)
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This holiday I’m planning lebkuchen, zimtsterne, and lemon meringue pie!
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This year I am vowing to make the Ottolenghi Spice Cookies. Also gingerbread and some kind of shortbread. Excited to get baking!
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It’s all about the cookies when it comes to Christmas in our house! We put together a big tray full of chocolate chip, black and white, Mexican wedding cake balls, peanut butter blossoms and a throwback to our Polish heritage with kołaczki.
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Shortbread, sugar cookies, hello dolly bars, Mexican wedding cookies, and plenty of fudge and divinity.
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Oh Luisa your photo guide is so helpful. I absolutely love your book, but like many others wished it had more pictures. My list out of your book includes braided almond wreath, parsley cake and cinnamon sugar buns. It would be fun to win but your book is on my wish list already. I love your writing and know we would be friends
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There are a few cookies that make a special appearance at Christmas time–Russian tea cakes, cocoa nib rochers a la Tartine, and one or another variation on lemon bars, because, of course, THE CITRUS–but by and large, to be honest, cookies are an everyday kind of treat hereabouts, and Christmas is all about the CANDY. (Candy travels well, you know, and finds a ready audience with my gluten-free friends.) I make fudge, Tartine’s bourbon pecan pralines, Tartine’s panforte, Deb Perelman’s coffee toffee, salted caramels, sometimes saucisson au chocolat, and because my family lived in Bamberg for four years of my youth, gebrannte mandeln!
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I make 3-4 recipes of biscotti for my family every Christmas using some recipes snipped from our local newspaper about 15 years ago. I try new recipes every now and then but the local newspaper ones are always the favorites, so I keep returning to them!
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Every December the women in my family gather to bake about 10 types of cookies – mostly Swedish in origin, but occasionally a new one is added. We go love to keep a tally of how much butter is used. It’s typically 15 pounds!
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My Christmas baking list includes chocolate chip cookies, chocolate babka, and cinnamon buns. This year I would like to try different types of yeasted baked goods, like panettone, stollen and yeasted donuts.
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What a lovely giveaway to bring some cheer to the day. This year I am going to make spiced nuts and some toffee. And some cutout cookies. And maybe some soft and chewy ginger cookies all rolled in sugar. And a few ginger cakes and at least one more cranberry-ricotta cake that needs to zipping up with lemon zest. Baking makes me so happy.
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Flan, lots of ginger and choc chip cookies and bread pudding. 🙂
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