Zimtsterne
Cinnamon stars for Christmas
There are so many of these Alsatian sweets and pastries that their recipes would fill an entire volume. - Austin de Croze
“Who could imagine Christmas without cakes and sweets? We could list them all, the good things that, especially around Christmas, emerge from the chaos of the home and the traditional baking pans under the creative intervention of capable hands?”
“Cinnamon stars with mulled wine have almost become a symbol for us. But we refuse to buy cinnamon stars by the pound. We want them to be baked at home.”
Cinnamon stars - Zimtsterne - are a Christmas specialty of Alsace, a cookie baked at home for the Christmas holiday season.
The history of these wonderful, chewy, star-shaped cookies is murky at best. Some date its first appearance in a cookbook - a German cookbook - to the early 16th century. The best I could find were a mere handful of mentions in local Alsatian newspapers from the 1930s: the first quote above from Die Neue Welt (The New World: Communist Party Organisation of Strasbourg), December 24, 1930, the second from Strassburger neueste Nachrichten - Strasbourg Latest News, January 1, 1935. No cookbooks, no magazines or newspapers in French. Nothing. Strange, indeed. And yet, these delightful, satisfyingly chewy cookies fragrant with cinnamon are fairly well known in France now, even as they remain a specialty of Alsace, a symbol of the holiday season, as was stated so very matter of factly in the newspapers above.
Egg whites, sugar, and finely ground nuts are a simple enough combination, and the French have been making cookies with this trifecta of ingredients for centuries, most notably under the name of massepain or marzipan.
François Pierre de La Varenne offers a recipe for a Du biscuit de canelle* or cinnamon cookie in his 1655 Le Pastissier* François that is mighty close to today’s recipe for Zimtsterne. His instructions begin with a basic or “common” massepain recipe into which cinnamon is blended or kneaded; the dough is rolled out to the thickness of “une pièce de cinquante-huit sols” (a coin of fifty-eight sols) then cut into small rounds or squares and baked. The massepains themselves are iced with sugar, like today’s Zimtsterne or cinnamon cookies are, although La Varenne does not specify for his cinnamon cookies to be.
Shortly before La Varenne published his first cookbook, Philibert Monet published the language dictionary Invantaire des Deus Langues, Françoise, et Latine in 1635. His entry for Marsepain or massepain defines it as a pastry made with tartre de farine (possibly an acidic residue of flour), almonds and other nuts, sugar, etc. I’ll assume his etc includes a liquid, most likely egg whites. The massepain continued to be a French baked good throughout the centuries, and yet we don’t really see a repeat of La Varenne’s cinnamon cookie in any French cookbook or magazine. And yet we find them in Alsace, most likely a tradition inherited from Germany.
Finally, the French returned to Alsace, and since then this beautiful province has become one of the great centers of tourism and gastronomy…. Alsace, which has done so much for (France’s) glory…has preserved its great traditions, linking it to the only country that has elevated cooking to the dignity of an art.” - Curnonsky, Recettes des Provinces de France, 1962
The Alsace region of France, which now borders Germany, has a history of being part of both countries at various times. As a result, it’s no surprise that the traditions of this French region are deeply influenced by German culture. And that, of course, includes their food traditions. And they are extremely famous for their traditional Christmas baked goods.
Let’s get right to the recipe.
Bredele are small cakes or cookies traditionally baked in the Alsace and Moselle regions of France and South Germany, mast particularly during the Christmas season. There are a wide variety of traditional bredele baked and served during the holidays, one of which is Zimtsterne, or Cinnamon Stars. Zimtsterne are cinnamon and spice cookies, dense and chewy, made of a simple meringue blended with finely ground nuts and spices and topped with a thin, crispy, snowy-white icing, an addictive and joyously gluten-free Christmas treat.`
Zimtsterne - Cinnamon Stars
This recipe first appeared in the November-December 2022 issue of Bake From Scratch magazine.
The dough requires refrigeration time, from 3 hours to overnight, so plan accordingly.
2 large egg whites, preferably at room temperature
Juice ½ lemon, about 1 teaspoon
Pinch salt
1 ⅔ cups (200 grams) powdered/confectioner’s sugar, more for work surface
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 ⅔ cups (250 grams) finely ground almonds or mix of ground almonds and hazelnuts (almond + hazelnut meal) + up to 3 more tablespoons for kneading
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon gingerbread spices * see note below
⅛ teaspoon salt
*note: Gingerbread spice mix, pumpkin (pie) spice mix, apple pie spice mix are each a blend of ground spices for baking, so similar that they are pretty much interchangeable. The mix of spices includes cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, sometimes star anise, allspice, coriander, cardamom, and/or pepper. You can make your own or, as I do, purchase a good quality jar at the supermarket.
Place the egg whites in a large plastic or metal mixing bowl and, using a hand mixer, beat for 15 seconds on low speed then gradually increase the mixer speed to high. When the whites are foamy, add the lemon juice and a small pinch of salt and continue to beat until just opaque.
Gradually add the powdered sugar as you continue to beat on high speed. Once all of the powdered sugar has been incorporated into the egg whites, beat on high speed for an additional 2 minutes until the meringue is thick and slightly increased in volume.
Remove 2 heaping tablespoons of the meringue, about ¼ of the meringue, to a small bowl, cover and reserve in the refrigerator for icing the cookies.
Beat the vanilla into the meringue.
Stir the cinnamon, mixed spice, and ⅛ teaspoon salt into the ground nuts. Gradually beat the ground nuts into the rest of the meringue. Once the nut mixture has been thoroughly incorporated, scrape this dough out onto a work surface that has been generously dusted with powdered sugar.
Fold and knead up to 3 more tablespoons ground nuts into the dough as needed until it is stiff enough to shape into a ball; the dough will be sticky but not wet.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours, longer if possible, up to overnight.
When the dough has chilled and is firm, preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment or oven paper.
Divide the ball of dough in 2 pieces and work one half at a time, wrapping and returning the second half to the refrigerator until ready to roll and cut. Using powdered sugar instead of flour to keep the dough from sticking to either the work surface or the rolling pin, roll out the dough to a thickness of about ¼-inch or a bit more. Cut out star shapes with a 3 ½-inch (8 cm) wide star cookie cutter and gently place on a lined cookie sheet. Gather the dough on the cutting board, gently re-knead together, roll and cut out until all the dough has been used.
Roll and cut out the second half of the ball of dough now or reserve for later.
Using an icing spatula or or palette knife, carefully spread a layer, not too thin (you don’t want to see the cookie through the icing) but not too thickly, of the reserved meringue icing on each cookie, smoothing well.
Bake the iced cookies in the oven for about 20 minutes; the cookies should look set and baked on the side and the icing no longer shiny but matt and still white. The cookies will continue to firm up once out of the oven; left in too long the icing will become tinged with a pale brown color and the points of the stars will harden.
Remove the cookies from the oven and lift each off with a wide spatula and place on a cooling rack to cool.
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Would almond flour work instead of “ground almonds”? It’s probably finer textured.
Would you clarify what "gingerbread spices" include? Ginger, cloves, nutmeg? Others? And amount of each please? Merci!