Traditional Czech Honey Gingerbread

Happy Advent!

The time when we all start countdown till Christmas is here. Day by day we are opening doors of our advent calendar and wait for the time to come.

I am a very big fan of Christmas and now, I even have one more reason to celebrate even more, as I got engaged last year. But Christmas for me is not about the gifts or the one main dinner. It’s the whole time preparing for it, baking “cukroví” (Christmas cookies) while watching my favorite movies and fairytales.

Every weekend, I make myself mulled wine, play Michael Bublé’s Christmas album while I dance around the kitchen. And every year, I make the absolutely same recipe of Gingerbread cookies. You probably don’t know that about me, but I come from Pardubice, a town with the biggest tradition in Gingerbread making, so I cannot allow myself to forget about my heritage and I dedicate one weekend to making those cookies.

I came up with this recipe over ten years ago and it has been tested year after year. The cookies are not as brown as in other recipes, but I don’t add the cocoa powder as I don’t want it to overpower the flavor of honey and spices. And if you’re the type of person who would like the recipe to be less sweet, go ahead and add less sugar. In the last couple of years, I cut the sugar portion as well.

First, you need to make your spice mix. Don’t buy one. It’s one of the best moments in the process as you crush the spices and the aroma starts to spread all over the place.

SPICE MIX

• 7 cloves

• 4 pieces allspice

• 1 1/2 star of star anise

• 3 - 6 pieces of cardamom (depends on how much you like it)

• Rind from one organic orange and one lemon (or normal one, but you have to wash it in soapy water and scrub)

• pinch of anise

• pinch of dry ginger powder (don’t use fresh as you’ll get the little strings from it in the dough)

• pinch of cinnamon powder

Add all the spices that need to be ground into a mortar and beat the s*** out of it. Once you have a fine powder, take all the bigger pieces you couldn’t grind. For example, the cardamom shells. Add the cinnamon and ginger powder, zest from the orange and lemon, mix together.

And now for the recipe

THE DOUGH

• 1 kg of all-purpose flour (the fine kind called Hladká in Czech) + some more for dusting the surface

• 300 - 360 g of finely powdered sugar

• 12 tbsp of honey (I would go for organic, dark forest honey)

• 120g butter

• 15g baking soda (usually one of those small packets)

• 5 eggs (go for free-range or organic and don’t be an a-hole)

• All the spice mix you made before

• 1 egg for eggwash

In a small saucer melt down the butter and honey with the spice mix. Don’t bring it to boil, just warm it all up so the flavor of spice infuses the fat. Let cool down.

In a large bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar until you have a nice light yellow substance. Add the spiced honey and mix so it all comes together. Now it’s time for the flour and this is a bit of a challenge. You need to sieve the flour into the liquid while still mixing. Once you added half of the flour, add the baking soda and continue sieving in flour. As the mixture thickens, you might need to start using your hand. In the end, you should have consistency in a play-doh. Transfer it to the dusted working surface and work the dough so it hardens a little bit. If it’s still very soft, add more flour. Once it’s nicely workable but thick, cut into 4 pieces and wrap each in plastic foil and put into the fridge to rest.

And now to the resting part. Some recipes say to leave in the fridge for over an hour. I say the longer the better. 24 hours a minimum. Why? Well, there are some legends that centuries ago when a girl was born, her family would make the dough for her wedding. I know that’s a bit extreme. But I would say a couple of days or even a week is fine. Sugar is a good conservant.

After the dough has been rested, you can start rolling into about 3mm thick dough and cutting out the shapes. Typical shapes for the traditional Gingerbread are hearts, stars or rectangles. But there are no limits to your own fantasy. I usually do rocking horse, snowflake, heart, trees, horseshoe, star or a house.

BAKING

When it comes to baking, you need to really consider your experience with your own oven. I baked these in 5 different ovens by now, the time and temperature were always different. A good tip is not to move away for the first couple of batches. The starting point is 180 C for 8 minutes for bigger shapes, 6 for smaller. The cookie needs to be firm and have honey color.

Once done, take out the sheet and wash each piece while still hot with the eggwash. The best tool for this is duck feathers. It’s very hard to find these days, so if you live in the Czech Republic, make a trip to some smaller town and go to those old home tool stores or maybe some cookie-cutter booths in the Christmas market might carry those. If you’re unlucky, get a BBQ brush or any brush that can be used for food. Don’t use the silicone brushes as they have quite thick fibers and your eggwash will be streaky.

Transfer all the cookies into a bigger plate and let them dry and cool separately.

The next step is - icing. Well that deserves a separate article as I want to show you methods of decorating, so tune in on Monday to see, how to decorate your gingerbread!