Low Fat Vegan Cooking

Springerlies Cookies

Although very sweet, these cookies are very low in fat, with no added fat. I’ve also seen them spelled springerle.

My Great Grandmother made these cookies. As a young wife, German recipes were very popular, and she made several. (See also Leibkuken 12/5/09). My Great Grandmother’s recipe called for “butter the size of an egg,” which I interpreted to be 1/3 c., while my mother thought it was a more modest ¼ c. My mother took over making the cookies by the time I was 7, and my Great Grandmother died. So they are a real traditional part of my Christmas.

Springerlies are made with a special board that you press on the dough to make a picture on the cooky. I’ve also seen ceramic cooky stamps that would work on the dough. They probably would be good just rolled out and cut into squares, or cut with cooky cutters. My mother’s old board is wood, about 8 x 6 inches. My first board was 3 x 6 inches, but with about the same size squares to cut for the individual cookies. About two years ago, i decided to get a bigger board, and found one at Sur la Table for about $100. It is made of resin, although it has a wood grain, and makes bigger cookies. The pictures vary, but include flowers, animals, and buildings. My favorite pictures are a pine cone, a bunch of cherries, a duck, a rabbit, and an oak tree. Sur la Table has an online site, but I can’t get into it because I don’t have all the required programs to see it. Ideal would be if you knew anyone living or visiting Germany, especially around Christmas time when they have wonderful street fairs with cookies, gifts, crafts, and food.

I keep my Springerlie boards hanging on my kitchen wall year round.

Springerlies Boards

Every cook has his or her own way of pressing the cookies. I used to dust the board with powdered sugar, but I found with no added fat in the cooky, the dough just peels off without needing any drying agent. I learned from my mother and Great Grand Mother to roll the dough in powdered sugar and press the board on top of the rolled dough. But what works best for me is to take a cooky sized piece of dough and smooth it into a flat cooky roughly the size of the finished cooky. I press it into one or two of the squares on the board, then slowly pull it off. I lay the pressed cooky on a cutting board and cut the edges along the lines of the pressed cooky, and put it on a board or baking sheet to dry. You can put them close together while they dry, so it’s best not to put them on the baking sheet you plan to bake them on, where they need to be farther apart, as they rise while baking.

To replace the butter in the original recipe, i used a fruit puree. I thought apricot would be good for a Christmas cooky, and I happened to have some in the freezer, so I used that. Cherry would also be good with the anise. You could also use dried apricots or cherries, and cook them with an equal amount of water about 10 minutes. Frozen cherries or mangos are usually available. In a pinch, you could try canned fruit, although that would add more sugar, unless you could find some canned in juice. Be careful with dried cherries not to get ones with oil.

You need to puree the fruit. Drain it and see if you can get it smooth without adding any juice from cooking dried fruit, or water. This makes the smoothest puree. I need to use about 2 T. juice with my blender. You may find, as i do, that you need to use more fruit than the recipe calls for to get it smooth in the blender. (It needs to reach over the blades.) Just measure out 1/3 c. of the pureed fruit and proceed. You can just freeze the rest for the next recipe or use it on your oatmeal. Note how much juice or water you used so you know how much more to add, or measure the ½ c. water called for in the recipe, and pour what you need into the blender, and then add the rest to the dough when it comes time to do that.

In my family, we dry the pressed cookies overnight or 8 to 12 hours. The picture is clearer and the cooky is chewier.

I sometimes make Springerlies a couple of weeks before Christmas and freeze them. My Great Grandmother made them for the family and mailed them, which probably took at least a week, and then some of them had to last till Christmas. My mother said they were rather dry, but still edible. They are good at room temperature for a few days, kept in a covered container, but i like them kept really fresh in the freezer until the day I plan to eat them. They thaw in less than an hour, if separated on a plate.

This makes a lot of cookies, depending on how thick you roll them. I usually cut the recipe in half and still have some to give to friends.

You can make the cookies anywhere from 1/4th to 1/16th inch thick. I prefer the thicker ones, which of course take long to bake, and make less. The calculations are for ¼ inch cookies.

Springerlies

Makes about 32 cookies
Preparation about 80 minutes, plus about 20 minutes to put them on and off the baking sheets the next day
Freezes well
Can be made ahead

4 c. powdered sugar
2 T. anise seed
1/3 c. fruit puree (see note above)
½ c. water
4 c. whole wheat flour
2 T. Ener-G egg replacer
1 t. baking powder

Mix powdered sugar and anise. Add the fruit puree. With my mixer, you need to scrape the sides as this mixture tends to stick and not incorporate into the flour.

Sift the flour, egg replacer, and baking powder into the mixing bowl. Mix well.

Roll out or press individual pieces onto Springerlie board (see note above). Use powdered sugar to keep dough from sticking, as necessary.

Set 8 – 12 hours, uncovered.

Bake on parchment lined baking sheets in a 350 degree oven 6 – 8 minutes, until lightly brown. Cool, and store.

Nutritional information – not guaranteed to be accurate:
Per cooky (1 of 32 per batch) – 85 calories/2.2 g protein (10.2%)/ .3 g fat (3.6%)

Lebkuken/Liebkuken

Some of us are addicted to sweets, however low fat, and because of that, i debated including any of the more high-fat, high sugar sweets i sometimes bake in this blog. But i decided that there are some of us who follow a low fat plant-based diet who occasionally want to have a treat that is higher in fat and sugar than our daily fare, but more healthy than traditional sweets. I have adapted two holiday recipes to be vegan, lower in fat, with whole wheat flour and no oil or margarine.

Two other ideas for holiday treats are holiday teas (see Plum Tea under the heading Teas in this blog), and broccoli, which when decorated with red pepper does somewhat resemble a Christmas tree.

The first cookie is a recent addition to my holiday baking, adapted from Sarah Kramer’s book How It All Vegan. When i started making the recipe for the first time, i realized that i didn’t have the fresh ginger that the recipe called for. But i remembered some candied ginger that we had, so i used that. The first time i tasted these cookies, i knew they would replace the gingerbread cut out cookies i made for many years.

The common replacement for oil or fat in baking is applesauce. I don’t like the graininess it gives to baked goods, but apples cooked in an equal amount of water don’t give the same graininess, so i go to the trouble of cooking the apples i need for a recipe. The gingersnaps only need about 3/4 c. raw apple, but i cook more so that it reaches over the blades of the blender and gets really smooth.

The second cookie, Lebkuken or Liebkuken, was made by my Irish Great Grandmother when she was a young woman and German cooking was all the rage. My mother got the recipe from her, and made them when i was a child, and i started making them too when i was a teenager. I think they could be adapted further and have chopped dried fruit in place of the candied fruit my Great Grandmother used. My mother used an empty cocoa can to cut these out in a rounded rectangle, but i have tree and star cookie cutters that i use instead.

Since i try to make my Christmas cookies starting in November, i buy the candied fruit the year before and freeze it, as it is not always in the stores when i am ready to start baking.

Happy Christmas!

Gingersnap

Gingersnaps

Makes 12 cookies
Preparation and baking is about 90 minutes, including cooking the apple
Freezes well and lasts at least a week at room temperature in a cool dry place

2 ½ c whole wheat flour
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
¾ c. maple syrup
¼ c. molasses
¼ c. cooked apple or applesauce
¼ c. cashew butter
½ c. candied ginger

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Drop Tablespoon sized cookies onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. If you like, you can smooth the tops with a wet finger. Cookies spread as they bake, so you need to give them space to do that. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Cool a little before peeling them off the parchment paper.

Nutritional information – not guaranteed to be accurate:
Per cookie – 160 calories/2.2 g protein/2.6 g fat (14.6%)

Lebkuken/Liebkuken

Makes about 3 dozen 2 inch cookies
Preparation about 90 minutes
Freezes well and lasts at least a week at room temperature in a cool dry place

¼ c. slivered almonds
¼ c. chopped walnuts
¾ c. candied dried fruit or citron
1 ¾ c. whole wheat flour
2 t. ground cinnamon
1 t. ground allspice
1 c. sugar
¾ c. water
½ t. baking soda
¼ c. almond butter

Mix the chopped nuts and fruit with 1 c. of the flour, and then the rest of the flour and the spices. Set aside.

Boil the sugar in the water until dissolved, about 5 minutes. Stir in the baking soda – you need a large pot because it foams up. Stir in the almond butter and stir over low heat until it is incorporated into the sugar-water mixture. Add this to the flour mixture.

At this point you can bake the cookies, or let them age four days as my mother and Great Grand mother did. They also drilled holes in the dough after three days and poured over the dough ¼ c. white wine. Pour off excess wine when you are ready to roll out the cookies. I tried this some years, but i refrigerated the dough, which my relatives didn’t do.

When you are ready to roll out the cookies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. If you use powdered sugar on the board instead of flour, the cookies will be more tender, and they are a little sweeter, too.

Bake about 6 minutes on parchment lined cookie sheets. Remove from oven and brush on a glaze with:

¾ c. powdered sugar mixed with
1 T. water

Let cool slightly before removing the cookies to a cooling rack or plate. My mother stored these in a tin with a piece of apple to keep them moist.

Nutritional information – not guaranteed to be accurate:
One 2 inch cookie or 1/36th of the recipe: 87 calories/1.5 g protein/1.9 g fat (19.7%)