I attended a wonderful workshop yesterday led by Mark Buckham and if you've never taken one of her workshops, you are missing out on great information. I came home and immediately rewrote my first chapter for the historical western I'm drafting. Got my hooks all in place and ready to wow my readers. (big grin).As it was an all day workshop, we were asked to bring a treat for lunch. I spent half a day Friday baking bretzelies and as they were a huge hit, I had several ask for the recipe and information on the iron. This was a cookie my great grandmother made. She brought the recipe from Switzerland and used an iron that had to be placed in the coals, a very time-consuming process I imagine. My grandmother carried on the tradition but used an electric iron. The last one she bought came from a company in Wisconsin. The cookie is also known as a bratzeli, bricelet or cracknel. Of course she bought her iron in 1976, but I did find a company in Wisconsin that still sells them. You can check it out here.
My grandmother's recipe is very similar to the one that's printed on the iron I have.
Bretzeli Cookies½ ib sweet cream butter (unsalted)
2 ¼ cups sugar
4 eggs slightly beaten
4 ¼ cups flour
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Juice of ½ lemon (plus a few drops)
Pinch of salt added to eggs
Cream sugar and butter in rather large bowl. Add slightly beaten eggs with salt added. Add grated rind & lemon juice. Mix well. Add flour, one cup at a time, and mix well until forms a large ball. Cover & place in refrigerator overnight or at least for 3 to 4 hours.
Flour hands well before rolling dough into small balls, a tad larger than the size of a marble. Flour hands often as necessary to avoid sticking to hands.
Preheat iron about 10 – 15 minutes & begin baking 4 balls at a time, placing one in each design section. Close iron and press handles together very slightly. Count to 21 (no more than 25 depending on iron) and about the rate your heart beats. Remove light, golden-brown cookies from iron with table knife or wooden spatula provided with iron. Repeat until all are baked.
Cool well then store in air-tight container. These Swiss cookies improve with age and will keep up to three weeks without tasting stale. Recipe makes 14 – 15 dozen cookies.
Trick: When I bake the cookies, I lay out two cookie sheets next to iron. When they come out hot, I place on one cookie sheet. As the cool, I move them to second cookie sheet to make room for the next batch on the first cookie sheet. When they completely cool, I stack them on the end of the second cookie sheet, still leaving room to the rotation of semi-cool cookies. I suggest you have a helper the first or second time you bake these. Mom and I used to make them together and I remember the fun we had. Now, I do them by myself and it takes about an hour to bake them all. Another trick is to make the balls small enough that they come out pretty. Mom always made them too big and we’d have to trim the edges to make them pretty.
