Le Blog très officiel des Vins d'Alsace

Bredele — for Xmas, any time of the year!

By the riesling team, 8 February 2011

©VinsAlsace.com/Quad

Bredele are the delicious little cookies Alsatians eat at Christmas, but you can eat them any time of the year, they're so good!

Bre­dele are the deli­cious lit­tle cookies Alsa­tians eat at Christ­mas. So what, you might say, what’s so spe­cial about Christ­mas cookies?

Well, I’d ans­wer that these are cookies with a heal­thy dose of spices, hazel­nuts, almonds and honey and come in a whole range of shapes and sizes, such as stars, pine trees, cres­cents, che­cker­boards and swirls.

And for the final touch, which makes them wickedly irre­sis­tible, a layer of jam, bits of cho­co­late or a layer of icing .

As far as the dif­ferent types of bre­dele are concer­ned, it’s the more the mer­rier. What I love doing is ope­ning the tin where all these deli­cious treats are kept and rum­ma­ging through them till I find the one I fancy.

And as a nice glass of wine will add to the taste, it’s time to get the Gewurz­tra­mi­ner out the fridge! There’s no bet­ter wine in the world for strong tastes like this, with its heady aro­mas of mature fruit, flo­wers and spices (car­da­mom, cloves, star anis, cinnamon).

And if your pre­fe­rence goes to great sweet wines, then it’s hard to beat a Ven­dange Tar­dive or a Sélec­tion de Grains Nobles. These are enor­mous, lus­cious wines with an extra­or­di­nary aro­ma­tic power but with the balance that makes them so delectable.

That’s enough tal­king, time to get down to the cooking! Here are 3 recipes just to give you an idea, but there are hun­dreds more.

Hazel­nut crescents

250g of flour — 175g of soft but­ter — 120g of pow­de­red hazel­nuts — 1 small packet of vanilla fla­vou­red sugar — 100g sugar — 1 bar of plain cho­co­late (for the icing)

Mix all the ingre­dients toge­ther to get a firm, consistent dough. Take lit­tle pieces and roll them in your fin­gers, pin­ching the ends and ben­ding them to make a cres­cent shape. Place them on an oven tray and cook for 15 min in an oven at 175°C. Leave to cool and then dip half of each cres­cent into the mel­ted chocolate.

Wal­nut circles

500g of flour — 350g of but­ter — 150g of sugar– 10g of pow­de­red cocoa — 125g of pow­de­red wal­nuts — 50g of vanilla fla­vou­red sugar — a pinch of bicar­bo­nate of soda — 1 egg + 1 yolk -

A few wal­nuts for decoration

Mix all the ingre­dients toge­ther to obtain a firm, consistent dough. Use your fin­gers to form tubes 4 cm in dia­me­ter, which you then place in the fridge and keep there for four hours.

Cut pieces off the end of the tubes to form circles 8 to 10 mm thick. Place a small piece of wal­nut in the middle of each circle, glaze each circle with the egg yolk and place the whole lot on an oven tray before put­ting in the oven for 20 min at 180°C.

Lin­zettes

500g of flour – 5 d of baking pow­der – 350g of icing sugar – 400g of but­ter – 3 eggs – 150g of pow­de­red almonds – 20g of cin­na­mon – 1 jar of rasp­berry jam

Mix all the ingre­dients toge­ther with your hands, to obtain a fairly solid, consistent dough. Cover with film wrap and leave in the fridge for 24 hours. The next day, take your rol­ling pin and roll out the dough to form a circle 5 mm thick. Cut out the lin­zettes using a flu­ted cookie cut­ter and place them on a but­te­red oven tray. Use your fin­ger to make a hol­low in each cookie (not a hole). Fill each hol­low with rasp­berry jam and then place the tray in the pre­hea­ted oven and cook for 12 min at 180°C.

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