Festive Spice Cookies (German Pfeffernusse)
Servings: 28
Ingredients
- 150 g butter softened
- 180 g rapadura sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 360 g plain flour
- 50 g almond meal
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon peppercorns
- ½ teaspoon cloves
- 2 star anise
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon ground mace
- Icing sugar – to coat
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Line a large, rimmed cookie sheet or two with baking paper.
- Place butter, sugar, vanilla and egg in the bowl on an electric mixer. Whisk until pale and creamy.
- Add flour, almond meal and baking powder to the egg mixture.
- Prepare the spice mix by grinding peppercorns, cloves, star anise, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg and mace to a fine powder using a mortar and pestle.
- Add the spice mix to the flour in the bowl. Mix well and knead into a dough.
- Roll about a tablespoon and half of the cookie dough into a ball and flatten slightly against your palm to form a cookie with a flat base and a rounded top. Repeat with the remaining dough to get approximately 28 cookies.
- Place the cookies 2-inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 15-17 minutes until golden and cooked through.
- Remove from the oven and cool completely on wire racks.
- Fill a small shallow bowl with icing sugar. Dip and swirl the rounded top of each cookie in the icing sugar until fully coated. Store in an air-tight glass container for up to a week in a cool corner of your kitchen.
Notes
Spice Mix - Spice mix can be made ahead and stored in a small lidded glass jar in your pantry for up to 2 months. It can be easily scaled up. The quantity in this recipe makes approximately 3 tablespoons (18g).
Using Spice Mix - I use up the entire amount (approximately 18g) in this recipe. The cookies come out nice and strong in flavour which deepens as the days go by. If you would like less spice, try adding 2 or 2.5 tablespoons of the mix.
Glaze Variation - To make these Pfeffernusse cookies more authentic, you can dip them in the glaze instead of powdered icing sugar. To make the glaze, combine a cup of icing sugar and 2-3 tablespoons of hot water in a bowl until smooth. Dip each cookie, rounded side down in the glaze and place on wire racks to drain and harden.