Alsace Bredele – Printen Cookies for Christmas

This is one of my favourite bredele recipe and it reminds me my childhood visits to my aunt and uncle’s house. My aunt only ever made these at Christmas and usually gave me a large bag of them to take home.

This was her mother’s recipe so it is over 100 years old now.

My youngest grandson loves these; they are his favourite and he requested them when I asked which of the biscuits they wanted. He asked me to make them into fancy shapes as I normally only make them as hearts! I think he means animal shapes. So this time they will look a little different.

Ingredients

2 eggs
250g liquid honey
250g sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp clove (ground)
2 tsp bicarbonate
2 tsp finely chopped glace orange or lemon
flour to obtain a firm dough (approx. 500g)

Method

Mix the eggs, honey, sugar, bicarbonate and spices together.

Add the flour in stages until you obtain a firm dough.

Wrap the dough in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge overnight.

Roll out the dough (5mm thick) and cut with either a fancy cutter or into lozenges.

Cook in a medium oven (180C) until golden. They will puff up during cooking to make sure they are not too close to each other on the baking tray.

Cool on a wire rack and ice with icing sugar and rum (or water)

Store in an airtight biscuit tin – they should keep for about a month. They are usually better after a couple of days.

Recipe By: Brigitte Kershaw

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