Swabian anise biscuits pressed in carved wooden moulds and dried overnight to hold the picture
Origin: Swabia & Lake Constance, Germany
From the journey of Anise.
Springerle are the most particular thing anybody has ever done with anise, and they exist because of an accident of physics that a Swabian baker worked out at some point before the fifteenth century. A stiff egg-and-sugar dough is pressed into a carved wooden mould, cut out, and then left uncovered overnight in a cool room. The surface dries to a skin whilst the interior stays soft. In a low oven the base rises and the dried top does not, so the biscuit springs up onto a pale foot and carries the carved image out of the oven perfectly legible. The name is generally taken to mean little jumper, from that rise. The moulds are the reason the biscuit survived. Carved from pear or beech, the oldest surviving examples date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the finest are museum pieces. Before literacy was general they were a way of putting a picture into the hand of an ordinary person: a saint, a scene from scripture, a proverb, an animal, a wedding couple, the seasons, a coat of arms. Springerle were baked for Christmas above all, but also for weddings, baptisms, and the New Year, and the picture was chosen to suit. The tradition runs from Swabia across the Bodensee into Switzerland, where the same biscuit is called Änisbrötli, and into Alsace and Austria. Anise is the only flavouring, and the biscuit is built around it twice over. Whole seed is scattered on the baking sheet so that the biscuits sit on it and take up the aroma from underneath during the long overnight rest, and ground or crushed seed goes into the dough. The leavening is Hirschhornsalz, hartshorn or baker's ammonia, which is what gives Springerle their characteristic dry, short bite; modern baking powder produces a softer and less authentic biscuit. They are not eaten fresh. A Springerle straight from the oven is uncomfortably hard. They are stored for two to four weeks with a slice of apple in the tin, which softens them to the right texture and is a step nobody in Swabia would consider optional.
Hartshorn is sold by German and Scandinavian grocers and by good baking suppliers as Hirschhornsalz, baker's ammonia, or ammonium bicarbonate. It is not interchangeable with baking powder in any meaningful sense: substituting 2 tsp baking powder will give an edible biscuit with a softer, cakier crumb and a duller image. Use hartshorn if the moulds are good. Springerle moulds and carved rolling pins are widely available; a well-carved wooden mould gives a far sharper impression than a moulded plastic one. Deep, bold carvings work better than fine detail. They keep for months in a tin and improve for the first two. Swabian households bake them in late November precisely so that they are right by Christmas. Some bakers glaze the finished biscuits with a thin brush of milk before baking for a faint sheen; purists do not.
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