Grandma Anna's Pfeffernusse

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog. 

When I was a child, my grandmother made pfeffernusse cookies. My younger brother liked them better than I did, but he also liked licorice - which I hated. Anise may not be quite the same as licorice, but the flavors and scents were similar enough to turn me off. And pfeffenusse were hard! No wonder the nickname was Pepper Nuts. Adults liked them with coffee but the children preferred chocolate chip cookies. 

We didn't have the recipe after Grandma Anna died so my mom tried recipes from cookbooks and the kind of pamphlets that were often passed out with ingredients bought at the store. The results were okay, but they didn't have the same texture as the adults remembered. Years went by and Anna's grandchildren grew up to have homes of their own.

One year my sister Josie hauled Grandma's old cabinet-style treadle sewing machine up from our parents' basement, wanting to clean & polish it and give it a place of honor in her home. After a stuck-shut drawer was opened, Josie discovered a cache of silk and cotton embroidery threads, along with a tattered yellow newspaper clipping with the recipe for the pfeffernusse.

Josie kept the threads but the clipping was turned over to me - by that time I loved to bake for the family and I'd also learned to enjoy the flavor of anise.My dad and uncle gave the Pepper Nuts a thumbs-up after tasting them, agreeing they tasted like Grandma's.

There was no clue on the paper to tell us where Grandma got the recipe or how old it was, although we're sure it was in use before the mid-1950's. In a few weeks I'll use this recipe again, to bake and pack and share the cookies with my far-flung family.





PFEFFERNUSSE AKA PEPPERNUTS 


Heat together until blended:
1/2 cup molasses ( I use dark full-flavored)
1/2 cup light corn syrup
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup lard (the original recipe called for lard but I always substituted vegetable oil.)


Cool the mixture for 45 minutes. Add 1 beaten egg*.

Combine the following spices and stir into the molasses mixture:

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon powdered anise (or 1 and 1/2 teaspoons anise extract)
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Sift together 3 and 1/2 cups flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Mix well. Cover dough and let stand overnight at room temperature.

Roll into 1-inch balls. Bake on parchment paper at 350 degrees F for approximately 12-15 minutes. When cool, roll in powdered sugar. Store in tightly covered tins in a cool dry place for several weeks to mellow the flavor.

* Since the dough sits out overnight I prefer pasteurized eggs for this recipe.

I have a vague idea that some of the dough used to be rolled out and cut with an angel cookie cutter to be tied on the Christmas tree as an ornament. I can remember the angels hanging, but I'm not sure if it was really the pfeffernusse dough or if it was gingerbread dough. Either one should work.

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.



 

The Harold Angel

I belong to a sentimental kind of family - the kind that remembers loved-and-lost people, that revels in sharing images in old photos, in old home movies and on video, the kind of family that not only emails candid photos to each other on birthdays and anniversaries, but also has the birthdays & anniversaries of departed relatives marked on their current calendars.

Sometimes we remember those we loved by raising a glass to toast their memories. Sometimes we remember them in .... the kitchen. Does anyone else connect certain relatives with their favorite foods? We do! Oral history tells us that Grandma Kitty loved kidney stew, horseradish and coconut macaroons, Grandpa Jim ate a whole raw onion every night before dinner, Uncle George was a broccoli fan and the key to Uncle Ollie's heart was a big dish of stuffed peppers.

Beloved Uncle Harold's favorite pie was mince - so his wife, my piano-playing Aunt Helen, made sure that a mincemeat pie was always included in the holiday desserts - a choice that was soundly rejected by the kids in my generation. Luckily for us, Harold's other favorite pie was banana cream - one we were happy to share. His December birthday plus St Nicholas Day plus Christmas also confused us into thinking that Herald Angels were Harold Angels.... not too far off the truth! He died a long time ago, but some years I find myself making a banana cream pie on my uncle's birthday and thinking about him.

Harold grew up in Chicago, second son in a big family. His dad had a furniture finishing shop where Harold learned to like making furniture as a hobby... as a young man he worked in the office of a big furniture company, falling like a rock once he saw my cute little aunt -the feeling was mutual. Harold's generosity and courtesy soon made the whole family love him. A few years after they were married, the Second World War separated them, and Harold served with the Army Air Corps (forerunner of the US Air Force) in the Mariana Islands where he worked on the cameras of reconnaissance planes. He contracted malaria, returning to the US many months after the war ended.

With no children of their own, Helen & Harold shared love and worldly goods with the children of their brothers and sisters. They were wonderful godparents! Harold bought a 16mm home movie camera to record family parties and the antics of the youngsters... and this attention made more than two dozen nieces and nephews feel special, and as time went on it was hilarious to watch ourselves grow up when the projector came out for movie shows. We saw Helen and Harold at least once a week when we were growing up, but he was usually behind the camera - not in front of it, so we don't have enough photos of him.

Aunt Helen and Uncle Harold hosted family picnics at their small, perfect cottage on a large lot - with landscaping that he designed, planted and maintained - even letting a small, flower-loving niece believe she was helping.Harold's post-war work was in textbook publishing - and that lead to a perk for us! The display books from the office were nicely bound outside but with blank pages inside. They were replaced periodically and he passed along the outdated models. Having real books in which to draw & write our thoughts let us pretend we were real writers and artists.
Helen's piano was replaced by a Hammond Organ - she delighted in leading family singalongs. Once the group stopped singing and began talking, Harold would take a turn on the bench - coaxing a different set of melodies from the keys as background music for the conversation. How I wish for a recording of even one song!


The old camera was replaced around the time the older nieces and nephews traded dolls and baseball bats for mortar boards and bridal veils - now Uncle Harold was ready to film the great-nieces and great-nephews , traveling to see the younger generations as they set up housekeeping in distant suburbs and other states. There's the camera in his hand below - outside our rickety student dwelling. They drove 1000 miles to see us, and acted as if they were visiting a palace instead of a dump, complimenting our newlywed culinary experiments as if they were dining in a fine restaurant. That's the kind of gentleman he was.
Harold died too young - long before retirement age - breaking the hearts of all he left behind. Many years later as we ring in 2011, gone is not forgotten... in this Christmas season, you are still our Harold Angel!

Happy Birthday, Kitty

When gardening with seeds was the subject, I wrote about my sturdy gardening grandma, who was born on a farm. This is my other grandmother, Grandma Kitty, a 4’10” bundle of spunk and style. She was born in April, and she's still remembered every April by her descendents. In this photo, Kitty is 21 years old, wearing a pleated dress that she designed and sewed.

Kitty died when I was quite young, so it's likely that my few actual memories of her have replicated themselves into memories of remembering her. But I’ve seen photos and watched old movies and heard a lot of stories about Kitty.

A city-loving apartment dweller with no chance to be a gardener, Kitty was pretty and kind, frequently taking in relatives who needed somewhere to stay for a while. The tale is that everyone loved Kitty – she’s seen in many group photos, never separated from the people near her, but always with someone’s arm enclosing her. Every Friday she baked and cleaned the house like a tornado, getting ready for whoever would drop in over the weekend. You might get her famous kidney stew, or the children's favorite Burnt Sugar Cake, or her own favorite coconut macaroons.

Having a houseful of company was Kitty's delight. With a large extended family just a stroll or a streetcar away, casual visiting was easy and children grew up in a expansive social network, where the cousins were as close as sisters, and the friends were as close as family. There was always someone in the group who could play the piano in Kitty’s parlor, so everyone could sing as they passed the refreshments – which probably included a bucket of suds fetched from the nearby tavern.

I heard that Kitty would spread a sheet of newspaper on the carpet, have one of the children lie down with arms extended to the side, and make marks on the paper. She'd send the child off to school and make a well-fitting coat by the time school was out. [Carol of May Dreams Garden posts the diaries of her grandmother Ruth, who was also a lightning-fast seamstress.]

I’d dearly love to be able to talk to my grandmother, finally find out the answers to genealogical mysteries, ask her if she remembers the Chicago World’s Fair, and quiz her about the photo taken at a pre-World War One party where all the young wives dressed as men and smoked cigars. But tomorrow, it would also be great if Kitty could clean my house like a tornado, whip up some macaroons and magically sew me some new clothes, because company’s coming and I could use her help.