Advent part 2

Hello friends. I'm Katie, and I have a Christmas spice problem. I knew it had become an issue when I started making notes about gingerbread on a post-it note at work.

But spices are important, yanno? And every different Christmas-y baked thing has a different mix. Well, all the things I like to make do, and the difference between them is important. They all evoke different places and times of First Eating.

So, I have three jars and a ramekin on the go at present: one for a piernik mix (that's a Polish gingerbread and I'll be getting to that in the coming weeks), one for Christmas Biscuits From Mum's US-written book of Polish Recipes (authenticity dubious, but end results pleasing), one for Aachener Printen (see below) and one for 'spice inspired by a blog post about a medieval recipe'. Yes, I am that person.

Let's start with the medieval, shall we? Three years ago, the British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog wrote about a 15th century English gingerbread recipe in Harley MS 279. The method -- add breadcrumbs to seething spiced honey -- is intriguing, but I'm leaving that for another day. It was the spices that caught my eye: 'safroun, pepir, canelle, clowys'. That is to say, saffron, pepper, cinnamon and cloves. The post speculates that there's no ginger probably by mistake rather than design.

Now, people I trust have Opinions, and not good ones, about saffron, so I'm ignoring that. But adding pepper to a ginger-based spice mixed definitely sounded worth trying. And so I did, in a couple of cakes over the last two or three years. Today I'm finally writing down what I did For Posterity, in case it turns out well enough to repeat.

Ginger and pepper spice mix

• 2 tsps ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground cinamon
• big pinch ground cloves

Un-medieval muffins

Make Delia's Ameican-style muffins, but strip out all her flavourings, add 1.5 tsps of the spice mix, and stir a tbsp of black treacle in with the wet ingredients.

We haven't actually tried them yet: I will report back.

And now to the Printen. I mentioned these in a previous post: they're traditional gingerbread biscuits from the (now-)German city of Aachen. Often rectangular and usually very hard. The recipes online are all a bit baffling, but the key feature is that the spice mix is high on aniseed and coriander, along with the usual cinnamon, but with no ginger at all. Additionally, they have little or no fat and are basically sugar/syrup and flour mixed together and left to rest.

The recipe I picked almost at random (it was near the top of the results) makes a vast quantity: I reduced the quantities to a fifth of the original. And I followed the instructions to leave the dough for 3 days in a the cold, and then another day once rolled out and cut up.

The result? Biscuits. They're hard, and brown, and taste more-or-less right. They're maybe a bit less risen than they might be, but I'm pretty pleased. I'll be dunking them in coffee over coming weeks. And, maybe using a couple to thicken a sauce for venison at Christmas: apparently they're used for game sauce sometimes...