- Beat brown sugar, syrup, butter, lard and eggs together with an electric beater.
- Mix together cinnamon, baking soda and star anise and small amount of flour; add to creamed mixture.
- Add enough flour to make stiff dough, so it doesn't stick to your hands. Chill.
- On floured countertop, roll in long, thin roll (about width of thick pencil). Cut into 1/2" pieces; set apart.
- Place on greased cookie sheet and bake for 5 - 7 minutes at 350'.
- Once you've cooled the Peppernuts, you can store them in an airtight
container. Makes a BIG batch so you can enjoy these with your coffee for
many days.
Peppernuts (Pfeffernusse)
The following is a story from Mennonite Foods and Folkways by Norma Jost Voth.
"Christmas will be very simple this year," the mothers warned their
children in the Berlin Mennonite refugee camp in 1945. "You must not
expect treats. We are grateful to God just to be here--alive, to have
food, clothes, a bed and a roof over our heads."
Supplies from America through the Mennonite Central Committee were
stretched to the limit as refugees continued to arrive from Russia. A bowl
of gruel or soup and a ration of bread were the daily menu. Christmas
treats seemed out of the question. How could anyone possibly bake? There
weren't even any ovens.
Then a miracle happened. Peter Dyck, the camp director, found a Berlin
baker willing to allow camp women the use of his ovens in exchange for
American flour. In secret, from midnight to 4 a.m., while the camp slept
and after the bakery crew had gone home, the women mixed, stirred, cut and
filled the ovens again and again. In a few short nights they transformed
flour from Manitoba and Kansas, dried eggs, a little sugar and a bit of
lard into peppernuts--enough to fill more than a thousand little sacks.
On Christmas Eve every refugee man, woman and child in the Berlin camp
celebrated with his own special bag of treats made with a little flour and
a lot of love.