Trader Joes has boxes of pfeffernussen (German spice cookies) available over Christmas. We got kind of addicted to them… they are amazing. But it’s hard to maintain an addiction at $2.50 a box.
So I’m in search of a good pfeffernussen recipe. I tried Google, and found the recipe from the Joy of Cooking. But sadly, while the flavor was great, the texture that we’ve become addicted to was missing. They flattened and spread as they baked, instead of remaining small round balls, and they were soft – more like a spicy drop cookie. We’re looking for something more similar to the TJ’s cookies, texture-wise – soft in the middle, but with a harder “crust” on the outside. (Also, despite its claims, the recipe made nowhere near 180 cookies. I got 23 one-inch balls out of it, which spread into 2-inch cookies.)
Anyone have a recipe that turns out with that texture? At first I thought I should google for recipes using less butter, but so far pretty much all of them use at least half a cup of butter/shortening, so I can’t tell if any of them are what I’m looking for.
When I’m looking for a recipe, I like to use http://allrecipes.com/ . I search, then sort the results by user rating then read few some of the comments of the top two or three recipes to get an idea of what modifications I might make to tweak it a bit based on what other people have done.
Her is one of the top pfeffernusse ones from there
I made some lovely pfeffernüsse using a recipe from Fannie Farmer. There’s no butter in it so the cookies keep a long time and are crumbly/crunchy all the way through. They keep their shape nicely too. Traditional Pfeffernüsse Recipe. Scroll down the page for the recipe.
Make sure the dough is ice cold right before baking. I’d suggest forming the dough into balls, then refrigerating overnight. The crunchy outer shell is a very thin layer of sugar; perhaps you can dunk the dough balls in a thin sugar water glaze before baking?
Pfeffernusse is one of the great parts of christmas. Ever since I fisrt tried them about 13 years ago, I get way too excited when I see them in the store in November. I always get the Bahlsen brand because I don’t do the cooking thing.