After Hildegard von Bingen's spiced cookies, the famous Lebkuchen from Nuremberg, zázvorky - the Czech variation, speculaas filled with marzipan that children in the Low Countries enjoy on my birthday, and several other recipes with or without ginger, it's time I shared a post about Russian gingerbread.
Pryaniki are baked all year round -on weddings, holidays and special occasions- as well as New Year's Day. The recipe dates from at least the 9th century, when festive cookies were simple mixtures of rye flour, honey, and berry juice. Herbs, such as dill and mint, were added in the next three or four hundred years, along with exotic spices. Indeed, the word pryaniki means 'spiced' or 'peppered' in Russian. The flavors used were cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, cumin, and coriander as well as nutmeg, aniseed, vanilla, allspice & ginger. Some recipes used dried berries or jam filling. The dough for pryaniki was either cut on wooden boards or shaped with various moulds. It could also be imprinted with stamps. In marketed versions, the honey was partly or altogether replaced with sugar. Other types, usually shaped in balls, were glazed with icing sugar. As elsewhere, Russian gingerbread became a token of love or a gift to mark respect. It was shaped like a heart when offered to a lover and weighed much more if given to someone of importance.
PRYANIKI (RUSSIAN GINGERBREAD)
This recipe is made from scratch. The red fruit jelly is homemade and overcooked so it was easier to handle: I used 250g seedless grapes and 250g brown sugar with 1tbsp of lemon juice that I cooked to softball point, resulting in approximately 500g of thick jelly.
I n g r e d i e n t s
for the dough:
300g plain flour, sifted
1tsp baking powder
150g walnuts, ground
150g brown sugar, crushed
1tsp cinnamon, powdered
1tsp ginger, powdered
1/2tsp cloves, crushed
1/2tsp nutmeg, grated
115g butter, melted
50g honey, warmed
2 eggs, lightly beaten
for the filling:
300g red fruit jelly
M e t h o d
1. Combine the flour, baking powder, walnuts, sugar and spices in a bowl. Add the butter, honey and eggs, kneading with your fingers. 2. Divide into 16 balls, flatten each on your palm, stick 1tsp of jelly at the centre, wrap the dough, and seal. 3. Arrange on baking sheets lined with paper, shaping the cookies with a mould or printing with a stamp. 4. Bake at 190C for 20-25 minutes. (It's important to have sealed the dough thoroughly so the filling will not leak.) 5. Leave to cool on wire racks, then store in glass jars.
V a r i a t i o n s
Use half wheat and half of some other type of flour. Adjust the spice mix to your own taste, including pepper if liked. Replace the jelly with dried red fruit.
N o t e
Whatever you do, the finished gingerbread is wonderfully spiced and chewy, like marzipan-filled speculaas.
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