SusieJ's Advent Calendar: December 8, 2008

The recipe: Springerle

Springerle are another cookie that will last from the beginning of the month to the end. They are a two-day cookie, requiring half an hour of beating, then an hour of resting, rolling out, and another 12 hours of drying. If you have no Springerle mold, you can use any cookie stamp.

The surprise: More Springerle!

Springerle are a very old cookie (sometimes literally), and the molds used to make them are almost a folk art. New molds are machine carved, but you can still buy replicas of intricate, hand-carved designs.

A clean disaster

Usually, the only time "cleaning" and "disaster" come into the same sentence when talking about kitchens, someone is moaning, "This place is a disaster! I'll be cleaning all day!" In our house, every part of meal preparation is ripe for disaster, up through and including washing the dishes.

We have three cast-iron frying pans, all of which are near and dear to us, as we bought them (at different times), from Fante's, the best cookware store in the Philly area, and the first place we went together. In fact, I bought my small pan with Jorj during our first visit.

Cast iron needs to be cleaned carefully. First, it rusts. Secondly, it's "seasoned," meaning a bit of fat is absorbed into the surface of the pan, making it non-stick. Too much or too harsh cleaning will remove the seasoning. Our preferred method is to bring heavily salted water to a rolling boil in pan, let it go for just a minute, pour the water off and quickly scrub (without soap) and dry the pan.

I had to scrub out the pan (when it had cooled down) with steel wool and re-season the pan before it was usable again.