Springerle

The origin of springerle can be traced back to at least the fourteenth century. Cookies come from the regions of South-West Germany, mainly Swabia ^{[1] [2]} .

Springerle dough is made from eggs, wheat flour and very fine sugar or powdered sugar. Traditional springerles are flavored with anise, which does not interfere with the dough, but crumbles on a baking sheet for baking cookies. Some recipes recommend adding anise extract to the dough ^[3] .

In the traditional springerle recipe, a snuff ( ammonium carbonate, ammonium carbonate) was used as a baking powder . Springerle, baked with ammonium carbonate, is lighter and softer than with another baking powder, have a clearer picture and longer stored.

Before forming cookies, the dough is very cooled. Frozen dough is rolled thinly and pressed using carved printing boards, then cut into rectangles, triangles or other shapes. The liver is allowed to dry for 24 hours and then baked at low temperature on greased and aniseed baking trays ^[3] . Under the action of the baking powder during baking, cookies increase in thickness at least twice. Baked springerles are tough and require ripening in a packaged state for two or three weeks. During this time, the cookies soften somewhat. Another method of manufacturing springerle does not involve cooling the dough. Fresh dough is sprinkled with flour and rolled out with an ordinary rolling pin to a thickness of 1 cm. Then a special rolling pin with carved stamped patterns is sprinkled with flour, excess flour is removed and a cookie with impressions is formed using a rolling pin. The dough is cut with a knife into small rectangular cookies, dried over one night on a wooden board and baked ^[3] .

Springerle is usually left white, but sometimes painted with food colors ^{[2] [4]} .

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  Raw freshly molded product.

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  Cookies after drying for a day.

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  Baked Springerle.

Springerle is used as a Christmas treat, soaked in coffee, tea or wine ^[3] . Springerles decorate a Christmas tree with colored holes by drilling holes in a hard cookie ^[3] . According to the pictures on springerle, they were guessing at the groom or good luck in business ^[4] .

Springerle is stamped with the help of printing boards - stamps without handles. Printed whiteboards for springerle are traditionally cut out of wood; there are metal, ceramic and plastic forms. As a material for boards, a pear tree, dense and durable, is especially valued. Handmade antique printed boards are works of folk art.

Printed boards can be large or small, contain an image for one or more cookies. If the board contains several images, they are placed in the form of a matrix and are sometimes separated by border lines. There are also boards with a random arrangement of plots. Light and durable, perfectly preserving small details, the springerle dough allows you to create complex, finely drawn plots ^[5] .

The embossing of the images on springerle dates back to the Christian symbol of the sacred bread , and the traditional plot of the old printed boards is religious motifs - scenes from biblical history and Christian symbolism. Later, in the XVII and XVIII centuries, heraldic themes, images of knights and elegant ladies, everyday scenes became popular. In the 19th century, themes of happiness, love, weddings, and the birth of children appeared ^[6] .

Small springerles are molded using carved rollers or rolling pins made of wood, ceramic or metal. Modern rolling pin for springerle, as a rule, is wooden or hard rubber ^[5] .

• Speculos
  

• Springerle (Hudgins S.) // The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets / Goldstein D. .. - Oxford University Press, 2015 .-- 920 p. - ISBN 978-0-19-931362-4 .