In Praise of the Pale Biscuit: Edible Prints

Close-up of traditional Springerle cookies with embossed designs.

During a cold, grey-skied sabbatical I spent in Berlin in 2014, my landlord’s daughter offered me a bag of what she considered modest cookies, along with her apologies that their flavors might be too subtle for an American palate.

Indeed, the brown cast of the Zimtsterne and the off-white anise-scented Springerle tend to pale in comparison with the bright array of technicolor American holiday confections.

An assortment of German baking traditions, all on one plate.

For the Christmas season, my own mother, an industrious ex-pat from Baden-Württemberg, prepares a quantity of fruitcakes (think nuts, figs, dates, brandy and chocolate, nothing gelatinously green or red in there) and Linzertorte: a hazelnut torte with a lattice layered over a thin filling of raspberry and red currant jam combined with a hint of kirsch.

These dense, chewy frisbees of nuts and bright fruit are what my brother-in-law good-naturedly dubs “jam pie,” a dessert that miraculously survives bad jokes, extended shipping, as well as long trips in carry-on luggage.

Stored in the refrigerator, they still taste fresh after months, should you be able to keep them around that long. I will admit to having lost an occasional Linzertorte in a crowded and chaotic freezer.

When I rediscovered it two years later, I unrepentantly served it to guests who ultimately couldn’t decide if it was the quality of the torte or the freezer that deserved the accolades.

The durable and delicious Linzertorte.

Indeed, most of these pre-modern dessert recipes had natural preservatives like honey and spices that allowed them to be stored in tins and savored gradually. German Christmas cookies are also notably low in fat, mostly held together by egg yolks and not butter.

Gluten-intolerant eaters also post paeans to these cookies because they don’t develop gluten. But maybe my favorite thing about them is that they are stealth delights, not garish in color, nor beckoning with icing.

They are elegant, compact, unbreakable, and you’ll count yourself lucky if you count yourself among the set who prefers to consume food produced in earth tones.

With German chain bakeries competing for market share and luring customers with empty-caloried American-inflected donuts and cake-pops, even the contemporary German has trouble sourcing some of these old-world goodies.

My Berlin baker opened for me a gateway to the world of hearty, historical, and appetizing treats. Consumed in moderation, one could even call eating these guilt-free snacking.

Springerle: Made by Mirella Siegrist

Consider the Springerle. This Swabian specialty, also popular in Switzerland, is a small miracle of texture. Produced from impressions made by forms (Model) of carved pear wood, this dough made from lemon zest, sugar, flour, eggs and anise is rolled to a precise height.

The form is carefully dusted with flour and even pressure is applied from above. The dough retains embossed impressions that the sculptor carved. Then the baker carefully cuts between guidelines to separate the cookies.

Mirella has a stash of forms that came from an antiquarian in Aachen, but these forms turn up in flea markets and antique shops stateside as well.

Dough, molds, and a bit of patience.

Designs vary but it’s typical to see among them carvings featuring stereotypes of people (ladies with umbrellas, or men in top hats, for instance), foxes, rabbits, or coffee mills (if you’ve read Otfried Preußler’s Der Räuber Hotzenplotz, you will understand the visual appeal of a hand-operated coffee grinder).

The damp cookie dough is left to dry under a towel for a day or two. This rest sets the design and dries out the top and the sides. When baked, the still slightly damp bottom layer expands in a way that the top of the biscuit doesn’t and forms a platform for the top layer to stand on. This base, then, gives the cookie its name “Springerle,” or little jumper, after the way it rises in the heat of the hot oven.

The distinct texture formed by these two layers is the showstopper of this confection and yields a cookie that is both crunchy and chewy.

The anise taste is subtle, distinct, and pleasantly curious. And then there’s also the subversive pleasure of destroying a perfect design.

Centuries in the making, and still delicious today.

The kind of German desserts like Springerle reside somewhere on the spectrum between savory and sweet. This versatility frees you to try them with wine; they pair equally well with a sweet Riesling or a drier white wine like a Grüner Veltliner.

So this pale biscuit with old-world design (imagine eating the direct copy of a treat someone else savored centuries ago!) can deliver whatever you happen to be hungry for: an accompaniment for coffee or tea during Kaffeestunde, or a companion to an aperitif, or after dinner with wine.

Try that, Snickerdoodle!

Stephanie Leitch

Guest Contributor • Professor 

Stephanie Leitch is a Professor of Early Modern Art History at Florida State University. She published Early Modern Print Media the Art of Observation: Training a Literate Eye (Cambridge University Press) in 2024 and is currently co-writing a book about the role of the copied image in printing technology.

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Words to live by

Wir leben alle unter dem gleichen Himmel, aber wir haben nicht alle den gleichen Horizont.

We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.

 - Konrad Adenauer