Frances Cardinale Submitted by Jill Cardinale Grossman A CyberMom from Claverack, NY

The Christmas season for our family was never over until my grandmother had given her annual fête on January 6, the Epiphany, or, as we knew it, Little Christmas. At this gathering she always served a variety of sweet cookies and pastries as well as some savory baked goods created from recipes handed down to her from her great Aunt Elizabeth.

Tante, as Elizabeth was called by my father's family, came to "Amerika" from Germany in 1885 to join her sister (my great, great grandmother). She hoped to secure a position as a baker here, and, as family legend has it, no better pastry chef could possibly be found.

My own grandmother, Frances Fischer Cardinale, authored a pamphlet-length cookbook in 1977, called The Way it Was, so that our family would always have these recipes. The pamphlet, filled with Tante's recipes as remembered by my grandmother and others she had given them to (the originals having been lost in a house fire in 1931), is replete with stories my grandmother was told as she learned to bake by Tante's side. I am proud to submit, for the first issue of The CyberMom Dot Com, three family recipes for the traditional German Christmas cookies I grew up loving, along with excerpts from The Way it Was.

" . . . St. Nicholas Eve, 1925. My aunt and I sat chatting in the kitchen of the comfortable white frame house in Brooklyn. 'Tomorrow,' she said, 'I must start baking for Christmas.' 'Tante,' I replied, 'I'd like to start baking my own cookies. Give me your recipes.' 'Can you read German well? I must write them so . . . English takes too long.' 'Certainly I read German, that's fine with me.' She went to her desk, took out her dog-eared recipe book and a handful of my uncle's bill heads and began to write . . . . . . I do wish those old German recipes were still available. . . . one had to be a really good cook to cope with erratic oven temperatures and recipes in which "a little of . . . " and "use your own judgment" played a prominent part."

---- Frances Cardinale, 1977

Pfeffernüsse

· 5 c. flour

· 1/2 t. salt

· 2 t. baking soda

· 1/2 t. black pepper

· 1 c. chopped, preserved fruits and skins

· 2 t. cinnamon

· 2 c. chopped nuts

· 1 t. ground ginger

· 2 c. sugar

· 2/3 t. mace

· 6 eggs

· 1/2 c. rum or whiskey

Mix dry ingredients including spices in paper bag, be sure nuts and fruit are well separated and blended with flour. Shake well. Beat eggs until frothy. Add liquor and sugar and beat until blended. Add dry ingredients, kneading into a smooth dough. Grease hands with margarine, pinch off bits of dough, roll into balls about the size of walnuts, place on greased cookie sheets 1" apart. Bake at 350° for about 10 minutes or until bottoms are golden. May be iced when cold if desired. (For icing: Mix 1 c. powdered sugar, 1/2 t. almond or vanilla extract and 1-2 T. water).

Springerle

· 3 c. flour

· 1 lb. powdered sugar

· 1 t. baking powder

· 4 eggs

· 1 heaping T. grated lemon rind

In a paper bag, shake together 1 c. of the flour, powdered sugar, baking powder and lemon zest. Beat eggs until very light. Add dry ingredients from the paper bag. Beat well. Work in rest of flour to make soft dough. Turn out on flour board. If you have a Springerle rolling pin, roll out to 1/2" thickness with plain rolling pin, then go over firmly with the Springerle pin to make cakes about 1/4" thick. Without the Springerle pin, roll to 1/4" thick and cut into 1 1/2" x 2" rectangles. Lay out on lightly floured cloth. Let set about 2 hours to dry tops. Bake on buttered tins at 250° for 20 minutes or until bottoms are golden. Cool and store.

Lebkuchen or Liebkuchen?

In Germany, "Lebkuchen" is synonymous with gingerbread but in this story about the special Christmas treats, my grandmother refers to them as "honey cakes" and spells their name "Liebkuchen" with an "i". If you were to break down the apparent misspelling, "Liebkuchen," into its parts, the prefix "lieb" means "dear" or "love" in German while "kuchen" means cakes. I have always remembered the special tradition associated with these sweets by thinking of them as "love cakes". My grandmother wrote in her cookbook: "

In [the 19th century], young girls in Germany were not the fragile, cosseted females one found in the rest of the Old World. In the towns, the daughters of wealthy merchants were expected to learn housekeeping and cooking if only to prepare them to manage their own households efficiently. The daughters of well-to-do farmers learned housekeeping and cooking; they also donned stout boots and worked with their brothers in the fields and stables. "All this made for independent, free-thinking young women who apparently went after what they wanted. Hence the tradition of Liebkuchen. "These delicious little honey cakes were carefully iced and decorated with tiny cutouts of cherubs or bells. Five to seven of the cakes were then tied together with a bright ribbon and presented by a young lady to the young man of her choice on Christmas Day. This is the recipe."

----- Frances Cardinale, 1977

Liebkuchen (or Lebkuchen)

· 1 c. margerine

· 6 c. flour

· 1 c. sugar

· 1 1/2 t. baking soda

· 1 egg

· 1/2 t. salt

· 1 c. honey

· 1 t. ground ginger

· 1 c. sour milk* (see below)

· 1/2 t. mace

· 2 T. vinegar

· 1 T. cinnamon

Prepare sour milk* and mix dry ingredients. Set both aside. Cream margerine and sugar, add egg, beat until light. Add honey, sour milk and vinegar. Mix thoroughly. Chill one hour. Roll out to 1/4" thickness. Cut into 2"x3" rectangles and place on buttered cookie sheets. Bake at 375° for 6 minutes. Frost with plain vanilla frosting. * For sour milk, add 1 T. vinegar to 1 c. milk and let stand for 10 minutes.