Frohe Weihnachten! Part 5: Gingerbread Village Cake

Want a showstopping centre piece, but you're not a fan of traditional Christmas fruit cake? Here I present to you a Gingerbread Village Cake, in our fifth and final installment of my German-style biscuits series.

A delicious and mildly spicy golden syrup sponge, smothered in cream cheese icing, and decorated with gingerbread gables and a little gingerbread house, this is definitely a treat. However, it's not difficult to make: of course, there are a few steps, but none of them is a challenge.

This is a nice bit of fusion cuisine: a golden syrup sponge, of course, is not a very German style confection. Also, this particular style of gingerbread is very English: German gingerbread, known as lebkuchen, has a much much higher proportion of sugar to fat than its English cousin. Some recipes may only contain a few tablespoons of butter to half a pound of flour.

This cake stays beautifully moist for several days, just make sure it's well wrapped and airtight.

INGREDIMENTS

For one eight inch (20 centimetre) round cake

3 medium (US large) eggs

3 ounces (85 grammes) brown sugar

3 ounces (85 grammes) golden syrup

1½ ounces (40 grammes) sunflower oil
1½ ounces (40 grammes) melted butter

3 fluid ounces (85 millilitres) black tea, or warm water

6 ounces (170 grammes) plain white flour: spelt, wheat, or gluten-free

¾ teaspoon (4 millilitres) baking soda

2 teaspoons (10 millitres) ground cinnamon

2 (10 millilitres) ground ginger

Gingerbread Village dough

4 ounces (115 grammes) salted butter

4 ounces (115 grammes) soft brown sugar

2 ounces (55 grammes) golden syrup, warmed

1 medium (US large) egg

8 ounces (225 grammes) plain white flour: spelt, white, or gluten-free
 ½ teaspoon (3 millilitres) baking soda

2 teaspoons (10 millilitres) ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) ground ginger

¼ teaspoon (1 millilitre) ground cloves

To decorate

1¼ pounds (570 grammes) cream cheese icing
Sweets
Desiccated coconut
Icing sugar, for dusting

~ ^_^ ~

METHOD

First, make the biscuits

• In a saucepan, melt the golden syrup, sugar, and butter over medium-high while stirring. Once it starts to bubble, take it off the heat and allow to cool.
• Once cool, beat in the egg. Sieve in the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon and stir until there is no more dry flour visible.
• Pour the mixture onto a sheet of cling film, and wrap well. Chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight.
• When you're ready to cook, preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F, Gas Mk.4) and line two baking trays with non-stick paper.
• On a floured surface, roll the dough out to just under a quarter-inch (4 millimetres) and cut into one small gingerbread house, and using the rest make some gingerbread house-fronts. I freehand all my gingerbread house pieces and house-fronts, but if you have templates, you can use that.
• Bake the biscuits for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on how soft or crunchy you like your gingerbread. Once cooked, cool completely on a wire rack.

Secondly, make the cake

• Preheat the oven to 170C, and grease the bottom of an eight inch (20 centimetre) round tin and line with non-stick baking paper. Leave the sides ungreased to help the cake rise.
• In a jug, melt the butter, golden syrup, and oil in the microwave on Defrost. You don't want it hot, just melted.
• Separate the eggs, putting the whites into a large roomy bowl with a pinch of salt, and mix the yolks into the jug of butter and syrup. 
• Whip the egg whites with an electric mixer on medium speed until the eggs have soft peaks. Gradually whip in the brown sugar, bit by bit, until you have firm peaks.
• Take a spoonful of the meringue and stir into the jug to lighten the mixture. Pour this back into the meringue and fold through gently with a balloon whisk or a metal spoon.
• Sieve in the flour, baking soda, spices, and a pinch of salt in two additions, alternating with the tea (or warm water). Fold the mixture thoroughly until you have a nice, flowing batter.
• Pour into the tin and make on the centre shelf for 45 minutes to an hour, or until nice and springy to the touch, and a skewer poked into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Now, assemble the masterpiece

• Use some icing to assemble the gingerbread house: I decorated mine with mini Smarties and some desiccated coconut.
• Slice the cake in half, keeping the dome. Sandwich and coat the cake with icing, keeping the dome on top.
• Arrange the gingerbread house-fronts around the edge of the cake and secure with a bit of twine while it sets. Place the house on top of the cake.
• Allow the whole cake to set before serving, about an hour.

Frohe Weihnachten! Part 4: Marzipan Slices

Frohe Weihnachten! I present to you the fourth part in a series on German-style Christmas biscuits: delicious marzipan filled biscuit slices!

From my personal observation, Germany loves Christmas, and Germany loves marzipan. It makes perfect sense, then, that Germans would combine the two to make delicious Christmas marzipan biscuits.

These started off life as a different concept, but evolved. Here, you see they are individually sliced biscuits, in a slice-and-bake style. However, my first attempt at these was based on German recipes that I read online, that instructed the baker to cook the whole filled log and slice it after baking. This technique was unsuccessful; twice. I found that chilling the log entirely then slicing it made for much nicer looking biscuits. Maybe I just wasn't using the right kind of pastry, or the correct oven temperature. Either way, I prefer the slice and bake method.

As you can see on mine, the marzipan isn't entirely in the centre. Be careful when you're wrapping the biscuit pastry around the marzipan log.

INGREDIMENTS

6 ounces (170 grammes) salted butter, at room temperature

6 ounces (170 grammes) caster sugar

1 medium egg

12 ounces (340 grammes) plain white flour: spelt, wheat, or gluten-free

2 tsps vanilla essence

1/2 tsp almond essence

A pinch of salt

1 pound (455 grammes) white marzipan, tinted in different Christmassy colours

METHOD

• In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolk and essences until fully incorporated.
• Sieve in the flour and salt and mix in by hand or with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together. It will be slightly dry, but don't worry: that's what gives them such a delicate, sandy texture.
• Flatten into a disc and wrap in cling film, and chill for half an hour, until it's firm to the touch.
• Divide the marzipan into two or more Christmassy colours, and roll into ropes. Use the coloured ropes to make a larger twisted rope about an inch (2.5 centimetres) thick. Just play with it until it's the right thickness.
• On a floured surface, roll the dough to a quarter-inch (5 millimetres) thick, and as wide as the marzipan rope is long, trimming the edges if needed. Brush the marzipan rope with water and place on the edge of the dough sheet. Roll up the marzipan with the dough until is it evenly wrapped; trim the excess. Depending on your shaping and sizing, you might have enough dough leftover to make a few cut-outs.
• Wrap up the whole roll in cling film and chill completely, at least 2 hours or even overnight. 
• Once the dough is chilled, preheat the oven to 160°C (325°F, Gas Mk.2). Line one or two flat baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
• Slice the dough log into half-inch (1 centimetre) slices and place on the baking sheet(s) about an inch (2.5 centimetres) apart.
• Bake for 12 minutes, turning the tray(s) around halfway through cooking. Remove from the oven, and allow the biscuits to cool for 5 minutes before transferring the biscuits to a wire rack: the marzipan filling is very soft and sticky immediately after coming out of the oven, so it will get completely messed up if you try to transfer them immediately.

Frohe Weihnachten! Part 3: Meringue Jam Rings (Butterplӓtzchen mit Baiserringen)

Frohe Weihnachten! I present to you the third part in a series on German-style Christmas biscuits: buttery biscuits, with a delicious filled meringue rings!

I came across this idea when I was surfing the web for different kinds of biscuits. I saw one small picture of these in a sea of Google images. As such, I couldn't really find a good reliable recipe, not even on any German websites (yes; I speak a little German). So, I kinda had to wing it: I added a little more sugar than usual to a basic meringue mixture to get it to crisp faster in the oven, and surprisingly it actually worked.

Sweet and buttery almond-hinted biscuits, crowned with a ring of vanilla meringue, and filled with a variety of jam, lemon curd, chocolate and caramel. What's not to like? Even people who don't really like meringue, including my fiancé, have admitted to liking these when I have fed them with the promise of "I swear it doesn't taste like meringue!" The lemon ones are particularly nice, because it's like single serving of lemon meringue pie.

DIFFICULTY

Intermediate: has a few fiddly steps

INGREDIMENTS

Makes 12 biscuits

For biscuit dough

2 ounces (55 grammes) caster sugar

2 ounces (55 grammes) butter, at room temperature

1 medium egg yolk

4 ounces (115 grammes) plain white flour: spelt, wheat, gluten-free

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

A few drops of almond essence

A pinch of salt

For meringue rings

1 medium egg white

3 ounces (85 grammes) caster sugar

A few drops of lemon juice

A pinch of salt

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Fillings of your choice: fruit jam, lemon curd, caramel, chocolate ganache, vanilla custard, frangipane etc.

METHOD

First, make the biscuits

• In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolk and essences until fully incorporated.
• Sieve in the flour and salt and mix in by hand or with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together. It will be slightly dry, but don't worry: that's what gives them such a delicate, sandy texture.
• Flatten into a disc and wrap in cling film, and chill for half an hour, until it's firm to the touch.
• Preheat the oven to 160°C (325°F, Gas Mk.2). Line one or two flat baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
• On a floured work surface, roll the pastry to just under a quarter-inch (about 4 millimetres) thick and cut out 3-inch (7.5 centimetre) rounds, re-rolling the scraps. You should get about 12 biscuits.
• Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for 10 minutes, turning the trays halfway through. The biscuits should just be starting to turn golden around the edges.
• Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before starting the meringues.

To make the meringues

• Lower the oven temperature to 100°C (210°F, Gas Mk.½).
• In a heat proof bowl over a pan of hot water, stir the egg white, sugar, salt, and lemon juice until the sugar has completely dissolved and the mixture is warm to the touch.
• Remove from the heat and whip on high speed with an electric mixer to make a meringue which holds stiff peaks and is cool to the touch. Beat in the vanilla essence
• Fit a piping bag with a star-shaped nozzle and pipe a ring of meringue on the top of every biscuit. Place back on the baking tray and bake for 1 hour on the centre shelf.
• Halfway through cooking, fill the centres with half a teaspoon of filling (except for chocolate ganache, which should be added after cooking, and never cooked in the oven). This will help the filling set a little.
• Remove from oven and cool completely on a wire rack before serving.

STORAGE

Store in an airtight container at room temperature, or in the fridge, for up to a week.

Frohe Weihnachten! Part 2: Pinwheels

Frohe Weihnachten! I present to you this second part in a series on German-style Christmas biscuits: two-tone pinwheels!

Everyone knows how to make biscuit pinwheels, so this isn't a demo; this is merely me sharing one of my creations that I made. These are made using chocolate and vanilla flavoured doughs, but you could use anything you like.

One thing I will say though, is that I think it looks prettier if the outer layer is slightly longer than the inner layer, giving it an enclosed look. Also, having one very thin layer and a thicker layer adds a degree of visual interest.

These are made using the exact same dough as the sandwiches, which is a lovely versatile dough mixture of 6 ounces (170 grammes) each of caster sugar and butter, beaten together, followed by 1 medium egg, and 12 ounces (340 grammes) of plain flour and whatever flavouring you like. The chocolate dough has one eighth of the flour replaced with cocoa powder.