The Bread of Wiesbaden

The other day I was wandering in Half Price Books, as we Fisher (Kenny's) are wont to do, lingering heavily in the cooking section.  I love a good food memoir, don't you?  There's something about the mix of lovingly crafted recipes and simply curated stories that speak to my heart.  Like a patchwork quilt of food and life.  I ended up bringing home Kitchen Confidential, a cookbook about lost American recipes and a knife technique book made by Sur la Table that also contains recipes.

But I digress.

 

While browsing, I discovered a French Baking book, and of course I dropped everything and picked that baby up.  The pages were full of yummy goodness, certainement, and though it was too expensive for me to buy, I enjoyed spending some time with it.  Nestled within the pages was a recipe for something called Wiesbaden Cookies.

What?!

My family is from this lovely town in Germany, but I had never heard of the cookies.  Oma was holding out on me on this one!  Or maybe they weren't that good.  Or maybe she didn't like them!  They certainly appeared easy enough- cinnamon, flour, sugar, lemon and a few other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting.  So I came home and looked for a recipe.  And looked.  And I could not find one!  

Le sigh. 

I thought it was hopeless until I came across something even better... it's true.  I discovered a traditional Christmas cookie called Wiesbader Brot.  The name translates to the Bread of Wiesbaden, and it is THE cookie of Wiesbaden.  Or so a few websites say.  Since the ingredients were roughly similar, I took it as fact that the cookie in the French Baking book was based off of the Wiesbader Brot.  I noticed a lack of lemon, but the cinnamon and copious amounts of sugar seemed too similar to be a coincidence.  Oh, and the name;)

They are time consuming in that they require a full 24 hours in the fridge, but the recipe, (which I found here), was super easy.  And here they are!

My goal is to find a way to make them look prettier, but they taste like a cinnamon teddy graham.  Which, if you are a child of the '80's like me, is pretty much perfect.

Do you have any family recipes for a traditional cookie?  Or any family favorites?  Usually when I bake cookies, I use my mother-in-law's recipe, because she makes the best cookies.  Period.  But I'm excited to make this cookie my own Best Cookie and start making it for our family Christmas Eve celebrations every year.  

Genießen!