Did you ever track down the pfeffernussen recipe?
It turns out I did digitize it and it was on my hard drive after all. Without further ado, my German heritage Christmas present to y'all:
Great-Grandma Alma's (Public Recipe) Pfeffernusse
Unlike most pfeffernusse recipes I've found, these are smaller (acorn-sized rather than walnut or larger), maybe less sweet, and crunchier, neither chewy nor crumbly. They're fantastic with a cup of coffee, or so the coffee drinkers in my life have informed me with due enthusiasm. Sorghum syrup is available at health food stores and online (probably) and I have never tried making these with anything else.
½ cup sorghum
5/8 cup molasses (just measure out a generous half cup if you're struggling, but you can also just measure a half cup + 2 tbsp. if you feel the impulse to be exact.)
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup butter
½ tbsp. cardamom
½ tbsp. cloves
1 tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp. pepper
¾ tsp. salt
½ heaping tbsp. baking soda (1 1/2 tsp. if you don't have the rare half-tablespoon measure)
2-ish tbsp. milk
2 eggs, well-beaten
5 ½ cups all-purpose flour
Cook sorghum, molasses, brown sugar, butter, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper and salt together on low heat until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture makes a thick syrup. Cool to room temperature.
Dissolve baking soda in milk. Beat in the eggs and syrup. Add the flour until it makes a stiff dough. Let rest overnight in the refrigerator.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll dough into long snakes about ½ to ¾ of an inch thick and cut ½ to ¾ pieces from the ropes. Bake on greased cookie sheets for 30 minutes.
Backstory
I am putting the Lore below the recipe to be a Rebel. Great-Grandma Alma, as the story goes, made pfeffernusse dough to sell. When people asked for a recipe to make her pfeffernusse, she gave them this recipe. However, Great-Grandma Alma was a shrewd businesswoman. This recipe (the only version that was ever recorded) is incomplete. There is at least one ingredient Great-Grandma Alma kept secret and only recorded in her own head. "No one makes it like Alma," her customers would say, and continue to buy Great-Grandma's pfeffernusse dough. Perhaps one day I will do a deep dive into research on German Christmas cookies and speculoos in search of the missing secret ingredient, but right now I have a full time job.
N.B.: Great-Grandma Alma's food empire also included black market chicken canned in gravy that got sent overseas in care packages during World War II. The chicken came from chicks she raised herself to adulthood, slaughtered, scalded, plucked, dressed and canned. While chicks were impossible to get, except on the black market, Great-Grandma was able to use her rationing card to buy tin cans and because it helped the war effort, so the story goes, the authorities kindly looked the other way.
