CHRISTMAS BISCUITS

Looking at the Statscounter, I realize that the time has come when hundreds of our readers search for Christmas biscuits and pastries again. So I thought to put more recipes up. If you haven't seen my posts from previous years, do have a look, there are many more delicious traditional Czech Christmas pastries and cookies recipes. Bon apetit! 

 Each of these recipes makes a fairly large quantity of biscuits – use half the ingredients if a smaller quantity is required. 

Please note all these biscuits will need to be stored for a period of time in cool temperatures (5-10C) to allow for the flavours and texture to develop fully 

GINGER FLOWERS 

INGREDIENTS 4 eggs, 6 yolks, 500g caster sugar, 550g flour, 2 tablespoons ground ginger

METHOD

In a mixer or a mixing bowl, beat the whole eggs, the yolks and the sugar till fluffy. Fold in flour and ginger.

Put the mixture onto a lightly floured board and work gently into a smooth pastry. Roll out gently to about a 5mm thick – do not use much pressure or the resulting biscuits will go hard. Cut out flower (or other) shapes. Put these onto a greased baking tray, or a tray lined with baking paper. Leave to stand for several hours, or overnight.

Baking:

Put your tray into a fairly hot oven, to allow the biscuits to quickly rise – but then turn the temperature down so they don't turn brown – they should be golden colour.

Decorating:

When totally cooled, brush them over with egg white, and (optional) use the egg white to stick a small piece of candied ginger on the top.

Store in paper shoe box or similar for 3 weeks or longer in a cool place.

YUMMY HAZELNUT STARS

INGREDIENTS:

for the pastry:

400g flour, 170g icing sugar, 150g unsalted butter, 2 eggs, 4-5 tablespoons soured cream, 2 sachets vanilla sugar, pinch of salt (optional)

for the topping:
160g hazelnuts - ground, 80g marzipan, 4 level tablespoons icing sugar, 2 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice

METHOD

Mix all the pastry ingredients together to a smooth consistency, form a ball and leave it in the fridge for an hour or so.

Shred or grate the marzipan, and mix it with the yolks. Add sugar, juice and nuts.

Roll the pastry to 4-5 mm thickness, cut out star shapes, place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and brush with egg white. Spoon a small heap of the topping on each star. Optionally, place a whole hazelnut on top.

Bake at around 180C for 15 minutes, leave to cool and store in an airtight container in a cool place for two to three weeks.

FRUITY/NUTTY GINGERBREADS

INGREDIENTS

Pastry:

2 cups milk, 6 tablespoons honey, 4-5 tablespoons melted butter, 200g caster sugar, 2 eggs.

600g flour, 2 sachets raising powder, 100g ground hazelnuts, 100g ground almonds, 100g ground walnuts, 100g sweet candied fruit (raisins or sultanas, orange and lemon peel, or similar mix), 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground cloves., largish pinch of ground star-anise, 2 tablespoons cocoa, grated lemon rind to taste.

Icing: 300g icing sugar, 2 egg whites, 2 teaspoons lemon juice or rum. 

METHOD

In a pan, gently melt butter, stir in milk, honey and sugar. When cooled down, mix in the eggs.

Put all the dry ingredients onto a floured board, mix through and add the honey-milk mix. Work into a pastry, adding more flour if too sticky.

Form a ball, cover in cling wrap, and leave in the fridge for a minimum of three hours – or overnight.

Next, roll the pastry to about 5mm thick, and cut out shapes. Place your shapes onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Bake in low to medium oven – check that the honey isn't caramelising or the biscuits will turn bitter.

When cooled, before removing biscuits from the tray, pour a thin layer of sugar icing over the upper part of the biscuits.

Leave in a tissue-paper lined paper box, in a cool place for two to three weeks.

HEART-WARMING CHOCOLATE HEARTS

INGREDIENTS

Pastry:

300g flour, 150g icing sugar, 150g ground hazelnuts, 150g butter, 150g grated bitter chocolate, 2 eggs, 1tbsp orange peel, large pinch cinnamon.

Filling: cranberry or apricot jam – or Nutella

Topping: melted chocolate

 METHOD

Mix sugar and eggs, add the flour, nuts, and butter. Add lemon rind and cinnamon, turn onto a floured board and work into a smooth pastry while adding the chocolate flakes. Form a ball, wrap it in cling-film and leave in the fringe for an hour or so.

Roll the pastry out quite thin – 3mm, and cut out heart shapes. Place these onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, and bake in a moderate oven (170C approx) for about 10-15 minutes.

When cool, spread half of the hearts with the jam or nutella, put the other hearts on top like sandwich, and pour on melted chocolate.

These biscuits need to be stored in an airtight container in a cool place for a week.

ALMOND DELIGHTS

(THESE DO NOT REQUIRE BAKING)

INGREDIENTS

400g skinned ground almonds, 160g icing sugar, 80g melted white chocolate, 40g powdered milk, 2 egg-whites, 4-5 drops of almond essence, icing.

METHOD

Mix the sugar with the egg-whites, add almonds, powdered milk, melted chocolate and almond essence. Put the mixture between two greaseproof paper sheets or foil, and roll to about 3mm thick.

Gently peel off the top paper and cut shapes from the rolled-out pastry. Leave these to dry for at least three hours.

When dry, use your imagination in decorating – white icing with coloured balls, or just plain roasted almond flakes...

DATE SURPRISE

(THESE DO NOT REQUIRE BAKING)

INGREDIENTS

Pastry:

300g ground almonds, 200g ground walnuts, 160g icing sugar, 150g ground butter biscuits, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 6 tablespoons brandy or rum, optional pinch cinnamon.

Icing: melted dark chocolate, half a date for each biscuit

METHOD

In a mixing bowl mix all the pastry ingredients. Roll out between two sheets of greaseproof paper or foil., to about 3mm thick.

Gently peel off the top paper, cut out diamond shapes and leave them to dry out till the next day.

Decorate with a date covered with melted dark chocolate.

Leave in an airtight container for a week or so.

DATE PURSES

(THESE DO NOT REQUIRE BAKING)

INGREDIENTS

500g dates, 200g marzipan, 80g cooking chocolate, tablespoon butter.

METHOD

Cut each date lengthwise, remove stone and replace with a piece of marzipan. Dip into melted chocolate and leave on a wire-mash stand to harden. Store in fridge.

MOROCCAN GRILLAGE

INGREDIENTS

500g mixed peel, 500g mixed nuts, 500g sugar (or less if peel is very sweet), 600g flour, 1/2l whipping cream

Melted dark chocolate as icing.

METHOD

Chop the candied fruit and nuts and mix them with the sugar and the flour. Bring the cream to boil and remove from heat straight away. Pour the cream into the mix, and let it stand to cool.

moroccan grillage

Place small heaps of the mixture onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, and bake in a cool oven (max 150C) till orange-brown. As soon as the colour changes, remove from the oven and tray while still on the paper, and leave to cool. Then pour melted chocolate on the top.

yet more Christmas biscuits

The blog has many recipes for traditional Czech biscuits - for more, click on the label in the index on the left.

The biscuits below are truly scrumptious, and don't take too long to prepare:

Honey sunflower cookies

Pastry:
250g plain flour
150g butter
250g runny honey (genuine bees' honey)
50g icing sugar
pinch salt
2teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 egg
half a teaspoon freshly grated ginger
grated lemon rind

Filling:

100g butter
200gsunflower seeds
125g honey
2 desertspoons sugar
Knead together the ingredients by hand.

Roll out the pastry, cut out circles, put a spoonful of filling on each of the pastry circle.
Bake pastry and filling together.

Best to keep all the ingredients at room temperature - if cold, could curdle.

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And just for fun, have a look at the next photo: would you believe all these biscuits are actually not edible, but croche'd ??? They are made by a local woman: just shows how people here still take their Christmas seriously, and how they are prepared to devote time and energy to prepare for it :-)

More Christmas biscuits

I am amazed at the number of visitors who are currently pouring onto our blog, from all over the world, and all in search of recipes for Czech Christmas biscuits! That query far outranks any other. By miles.
So I thought I'd add a few more, and send them into the aether. (For those who might have landed on this page from the search engine, there are quite a few other recipes in the blog, from last December - search label Christmas biscuits).

Wasps' nests

these biscuits (see arrow) need two essentials: round dry sponge biscuits, and small metal, plastic or wooden forms - both are easily obtained in the Czech republic, but you may need to improvise to create your own version:

NESTS

200g ground dried sponge biscuits, 100g ground nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, whatever), 150g crystal sugar, 70g butter, 1 egg. 2 table spoons cocoa, 2 table spoons rum

Mix all together into thick paste and leave to rest. Then dust the forms with sugar and fill them with the paste. Make hollows in the paste and fill them with cream filling. Seal the filled 'nest' with a sponge biscuit. When the biscuit is nicely set and won't pull off easily, turn the nests over.

FILLING

2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp sugar, vanilla sugar to taste, 1 egg yolk, rum

Chocolate nut baskets

PASTRY

300g flour, 150-200g butter, 100g icing sugar, 1 whole egg, 1 yolk, 1/2pack raising agent.

FILLING

150g digestive or other biscuits, ground, 200g nuts, 1 vanilla sugar, 2 tsps rum or brandy, 300ml milk

DECORATION

Chocolate icing, nuts

1/ Mix together all the pastry ingredients, work into pastry and leave in fridge till the next day. 2/ Mix together filling ingredients apart from milk. Then boil the milk and add the rest of the ingredients, boiling for a little while to form thick paste. 3/ Fill suitable small baking forms with the pastry and bake till golden. 4/ Fill cooled pastry baskets with the filling, and decorate.

Traditional Christmas pastry decorations; biscuits

I've pinched these two images off Google because, alas, I just don't have the patience to make any of these - but I thought they should go on the blog because these 'Vizovice' figures are very typical of Moravian, folksy, tree-decorations, and unusual in that they are made from dough.
You can read about the process (in English) and see many more photos of this decorative pastry
by clicking the link, but in short, all you need is ordinary flour, mixed with water, and a tiny bit of yeast (a pea-size bit for a kilo of flour). You work this well into a smooth dough, firm enough to hold shape when modelled.
Modelling the various figures and animals is done by hand, with the aid of scissors (e.g. for feathers or for hedgehog spines) or a small knife, and often a motif of platting is used too. Use linseeds for eyes and buttons, etc.

Leave your figures to rise slightly once on the baking tray, brush them over with egg-white, and bake slowly in a dry oven - about 3 hrs at 120C.

You can make people or animals - in the traditional lore each animal symbolises some wish, such as a frog stands for clear water, dove for peace, cockerell for fertility, squirrel for plenty in the larder. The pastries are then used for decorating the Christmas tree, sometimes people make figures for more or less elaborate Nativity scenes that are placed under the tree.
A lovely way to involve children when making home-made decorations, if a bit messy :-)

Christmas biscuits

By popular request I've added a few more recipes to the post below:
see 'Christmas biscuits - Recipes 3'
Bon apetit!

Christmas biscuits - Recipes 3

Mini Nut cakes
100g flour, 150g icing sugar, 250g unsalted butter, 150g very finely ground nuts (works equally well with walnuts or hazelnuts)
Redcurrant jam
Icing: melt 3 bars of cooking chocolate, and mix with 200g butter, 150g icing sugar and hot water as necessary.

1/Mix all ingredients and work into a pastry. Don't overwork it.
2/ leave in fridge for 1/2 hr
3/roll out to 4mm thickness and cut out small (approx 3-4cm diameter) round shapes.
4/bake on baking sheet till golden pink
5/When cooled, stick together a pair of biscuits each with redcurrant or cranberry jam
6/ pour on the icing and leave in a cool place to set.

WALLNUT BISCUITS
200g flour, 120g butter (unsalted, 100g icing sugar, 2 eggs,lemon peel, walnuts (whole)

1/Mix flour, sugar, I whole egg + 1 egg white and add the grated lemon skin.
2/ Leave for 30 minutes in a cool place.
3/ Roll out to 5mm thick, cut out shapes, add walnuts as decoration, then leave again for 15 mins.
Bake in hot oven.

CHOCOLATE ‘SALAMI’
(this is easy-to make, no fuss, but absolutely scrumptious)
100g cooking chocolate. 1 whole egg, 180g icing sugar, 180g nuts (half ground fine, half in rough bits), candied fruit

1/ Mix melted chocolate (not too hot) with egg, add the sugar and the rest of the ingredients.
2/ Make a salami shape, (using icing sugar on hands), and wrap it in aluminium foil, again first putting sugar on the foil so it doesn’t stick.
3/ Leave in fridge – do not bake!!
4/ Before serving, unwrap and cut into thin 'salami' slices

CHOCOLATE 'SALAMI' 2
As before, but adding crushed biscuits

COCONUT BALLS
40g butter, 120gg sugar, 30g cocoa, 50g ground coconut, 1 egg white
(you can add rum or brandy)
Mix all together, make small balls and leave in the fridge. DO NOT BAKE!

ALMOND biscuits
140g icing sugar, 140g almonds with skins – ground (can be made with any other unpeeled nuts), lemon rind from ½ lemon, ground vanilla – pinch, 3 egg whites

Mix all together, let it rest, then roll out to 1/4cm thick.
Leave on the board to dry out a bit.

Then make icing:
100g icing sugar, 1 egg white, ½ teaspoon lemon juice

Spread icing on the pastry, cut out shapes, then bake.

CHOCOLATE HALF-MOONS
120g butter, 120g icing sugar, 120g cooking chocolate, 3 eggs, 120g flour

icing: 300g icing sugar, 4 spoons rum, water

1/Beat butter, sugar and melted chocolate to a foamy consistency.
Add eggs (gradually)
Flour should be folded in last.
2/Pour onto baking tin finger deep.
3/Bake in moderate oven.

4/when baked and cool, pour icing over it.
5/When icing hardens, cut out half-moon shapes

Christmas biscuits Recipe 2

Spicy honey biscuits
1 cup milk, 3 desert spoons honey, 100g sugar, 100g melted butter, 1 egg
300g flour, 1 sachet baking powder, 150g mixed nuts - crushed, 100g mixed peel with raisins, 1 desert spoon cocoa powder, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder, 1/2 teaspoon crushed cloves, lemon zest, pinch star anise.
1/ Stir the honey, butter and sugar into the warm milk, mix well, then whisk in the egg.
2/ mix together all the dry ingredients and use the milk mixture to make a soft pastry - but if it is too soft to handle, add more flour.
3/ Work the pastry well, then wrap in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for half a day.
4/ roll the pastry out to about 1/2cm thickness and cut out shapes according to your fancy.
5/ Bake on baking sheet or non-stick tray, in a slow oven.
6/ Decorate the biscuits with a thin coating of runny icing - you can vary the icing flavours from lemon to rum or cocoa, or cinnamon, according to taste. Crown the biscuits with half a walnut or a single almond.

Another Czech obsession :-) biscuit baking

If you go to any supermarket in Czecho now, you will notice shoppers, especially women of all ages, shapes, class and persuasion, pushing trolleys piled high with flour, butter, cocoa, nuts, and lots of sugar. Why? Because it's time for baking. No matter how modern, stressed, low or high-flying, and no matter that every year they vow never to do it again, Czech women simply have to spend hours and days baking Christmas biscuits. It's a highly competitive sport: they compete how many different kinds of biscuits they'll make, and how delicious they are. Family recipes are kept secret, and exchanging them is a mark of the closest friendship and trust.
The biscuits have to be made this far in advance, because a/ they do take an inordinate amount of time, and b/ because they need to 'ripen' for at least a couple of weeks before they are eaten. They are stored in containers where they get a moist quality - quite different to the crispy kind of biscuit we like to crunch in Britain.
When it gets to Christmas and people visit their friends and relations, it is always with a container in hand - a ritual of tasting then ensues, comparing the hostess' biscuits with the visitor's, and counting the many varieties on offer, with much oo-ing and aaaah-ing. By the end of the holiday everyone gets to the point of not wanting to see another biscuit ever again - until next Christmas, when it all starts again.
The greatest faux-pas is to come visiting with a bought collection of biscuits. And so even single men often get down to baking - some of the best biscuits I've tasted come year after year from my 60 year old brickie :-)

I've decided to break the taboo and give you a few recipes - starting with my favourite, Vanilla sticks. Very easy to make, and simply delicious:

Vanilla sticks - Christmas recipe 1
200g ground almonds
200g butter (unsalted)
200g flour
200g icing sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
2-3 egg whites
lemon peel, finely grated

Mix it all together, do not work the pastry too hard or the result won't melt in the mouth quite so perfectly :-) let it rest for 15-30 minutes, then gently roll finger-thick long 'snakes', and cut them into 3-4 cm pieces. You can leave these pieces as sticks or shape them to 1/2 moon-shapes. You can even gently roll the pastry out to about 4mm thick and cut out biscuits shapes. But whatever shape you make them, they taste simply heavenly!
Sprinkle on a little bit of icing sugar for coating once baked, and while still hot.
Put the biscuits in an airtight box for at least a week before serving.