From the Keepin’ It Simple Kitchen, it’s time for another Fat Man Cookith here at LedeNews. In fact, as the season of Advent begins, we’ll be bringing you a new recipe every Sunday for the next few, featuring some of our holiday favorites.
This week, we up the ante a bit with a recipe I’ve always enjoyed, never attempted myself until this holiday season. An added bonus to this recipe is the delicious smells wafting through your kitchen as the final product bakes in the oven. Turn on the Christmas music and grabbed some Gluhwein.
It’s time to make Berliner Brot, otherwise known as chocolate spice bars. As usual, I’m sticking with recipes found on GermanFoods.org. It keeps things simple, just the way I like it.
Ingredient List
- 1 stick of butter
- 2 eggs
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- 1 cup superfine sugar
- 2½ squares of semi-sweet baking chocolate (roughly 2.5 ounces total)
- 12/3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tbsp rum
- ½ tsp ground cloves
- ¾ cup chopped almonds
The Process
Make your life easier and chop the almonds before getting started. I have a cheapo chopper I purchased at Walmart, but it does the trick. Just slap it down repeatedly until your almonds are nicely chopped up. Then, set that aside for now.
Combine the sugars, eggs and butter in a bowl and blend/beat until fluffy. I cut up the stick of butter into smaller segments for ease of blending.
The recipe calls for everything in the same bowl, but I mixed the dry ingredients separate, and then combined.
First, take the baking chocolate and finely grate it into the bowl. Then add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and rum to the mixture. Actually, hold off on the rum until after combined with the wet ingredients.
As far as what type, up to you. I used what was on-hand, but next time think I’ll use Kraken as it’s more to my liking.
Once this is combined and mixed, then you want to fold in and mix the almonds. Whatever your mixing utensil is, make sure it’s sturdy. The dough will be quite thick at this point.
Into the Oven
The oven should have been preheated to 350 degrees, which I also should have mentioned beforehand. Better late than never.
Take a cookie sheet and line it with parchment paper. Then spoon out the dough on the paper and start to need and press it into shape. Next time I’ll make a double batch in order to fill the entire sheet, but kept the dough square-ish on the trey.
Then bake between 20-25 minutes at 350. I went with 23 minutes and the extreme edges got a little extra done. So, opt for closer to 20 minutes.
While baking, make your mixture of icing from the easy method of powdered sugar and water. The recipe calls for egg whites and sugar, but I’m not a fan of dealing with egg whites., So powdered sugar it is.
Once out of the oven, “paint” on the icing atop of the still warm bread. Once that is complete, cut your Berliner Brot into either square or rectangular shapes. The size is up to you.
Also, if you choose, you can use Christmas cutouts to make shapes prior to putting the mixture into the oven. I think I’ll go with that next time.
Enjoy and stay tuned for next week’s edition as we tackle a pair of holiday favorites for the final edition: Pfeffernüsse and Nürnberger Lebkuchen.
