Because several people have asked for his recipe, I am divulging it here. But, be warned, THOMY's Grandma's peppernuts take three days, quite a bit of space, and at least one great big bowl to complete. You have to really want them. But they're soooooo worth it.
Grandma Lawrenz's Peppernuts
(the big recipe)
3/4 pound butter
3 C sugar
1.5 C sweet cream (half & half)
1.5 C white syrup (light corn syrup)
2 tsp. anise extract
In a very large bowl, cream the butter until fluffy. Then add the sugar, half & half, syrup, and anise extract.
12 C all-purpose flour
2 T baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. black pepper
3/4 tsp. nutmeg
3/4 tsp. mace
3/4 tsp. allspice
3/4 tsp cloves
(all the spices are ground spices)
Sift the 12 cups of flour into another large bowl. Stir in the baking powder, salt, and remaining spices.
Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, a cup or so at a time until the flour is mixed in. The dough will be quite difficult to stir at the end. Cover the dough in the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight.
The next day, roll handfuls of the dough into long "worms" about the width of your pan and to the diameter of a penny. Lay them on wax paper in pans to freeze. After they're frozen, slice them up and bake on buttered pans at 350-375 degrees F for sixteen minutes. (THOMY has discovered that 360 F works best for our oven.)
Yields gobs and gobs. THOMY uses his great big bowl to store the peppernuts temporarily after he takes them out of the oven. Keep them in airtight containers afterwards or in pretty bowls around the house so people can't avoid them but...must...have...more.
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New Moon Swap
I promised pictures of the felted bag and other swap goodies that I sent my partner.
The Walls of Volterra bag, based on the Felted Slip Stitch bag by Michele Bernstein.
A verrry easy bag. It looks like a more complex colorwork technique but it's not. I also made stitch markers and a needle case for my swap partner.
(The bracelet to the left of the needle case is a wrist abacus/row counter. It's a variation of a few tutorials I've seen on the 'net, but I can't remember where I saw them right now.)
The tutorial for the needle case is on Multicrafty.
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Beads can be just as addictive as peppernuts (though they'll break your teeth more easily). I made a cherries necklace pendant for my small quilting group's Christmas gift exchange.
And I haven't forgotten about my Almost Amish Puzzle Blogaversary guess-a-thon. The winner is Liz in Chicago. Congrats, Liz! The scissors fob and stitch markers in the photo below will be mailed to you this week. The scissors fob with the red leaf is for my longsuffering Pay-It-Forward recipient.
If I don't post again before Christmas, then I hope everyone will have a safe and merry one this year.
you really should go to michele's blog and see who else is addicted to Peppernuts. i didn't try your peppernuts last night b/c i was too obsessed with your peppermint cookies.
ReplyDeletei love my mom's peppernut recipe...anice and all. it's almost hard to try other peppernuts because of how different they all taste. i think we're all biased to our gmas recipe.
with a name like schmidt.... ps)i love how you beautify even things like scissors. thanks for that!
Yummy, yummy!
ReplyDeleteBTW, Here's a link to my post ast year about peppernuts here. Just looking at the picture again reminds me of how much work they are to make!
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