Happy New Year, 1950-1951

I’ve recently found some non-recipes among my grandma’s recipe collections.

To distract myself in the evenings when I have trouble getting to sleep, I’ve been sifting through the cigar boxes, looseleaf cookbooks, and other places Grandma stored her recipes. I’ve been trying to organize them, transcribing them, too.

One of these sources is Grandma Schroeder’s copy of My Own Recipes: Loose Leaf Cook Book. It must date to the 1920s or 30s. The pages are exceedingly brittle (especially considering it’s a looseleaf binding), and the binder itself fell apart. Grandma fixed it together with strapping tape. That, by now, is not able to hold it together, either.

The printed pages of this volume are brittle and falling out of the two rings. So fragile.

This notebook, however, is chock full of handwritten recipes, written on index cards, note paper, the backs of envelopes, you name it. Grandma added to this collection her whole life (though later recipes mostly wound up in the aforementioned cigar boxes).

But at the very back of her copy of My Own Recipes: Loose Leaf Cook Book, I found a cute little handmade Christmas/New Year’s card made by my uncle Tom in late 1950, perhaps as a school art project, or perhaps in Sunday school. I think it’s obviously a gift for his parents.

It’s a winter scene, with a church, a night sky, snow, and a full moon. The snow effect was created by spattering white paint using a toothbrush, I’ll bet. The moon in the sky is rather fanciful, since it’s usually not visible when snow is falling, with the sky thus cloudy. In the upper left corner is a miniature, commercially printed calendar for 1951, sewn together in actual pages.

There’s evidence that this little artwork was tacked up onto a bulletin board, or something. Maybe the tack was only used for the creation of the piece, since there’s no white-snow-spatter where the thumbtack had been.

Uncle Tom, born in 1944, would have been six when he made this. And it’s clearly his, with his name written on the front and the back. (It’s hard to write your name in pencil on a piece of black construction paper.)

So even after 1951 came and went, and the little calendar was out of date, Grandma kept this little artwork all these years, tucked into the very back of her looseleaf cookbook.

So, being curious, I had to look up some things. First, the moon amused me. It’s so small. Generally speaking, I think I expected it to be about the diameter of a bottlecap, but instead, it’s not even half an inch wide.

Then I remembered what it was like to try to cut a perfect circle out of a piece of construction paper, using kindergarten scissors, and having no plan for how to cut a circle. My circles got smaller and smaller, as I rotated the paper and trimmed off all the offending pokey-out bits. If I’d traced a circle first, it would’ve been easier.

But it’s clearly intended to be a full moon in Uncle Tom’s artwork. I doubt anyone would have intended it to be, say, a gibbous moon.

And this got me wondering. Was there a full moon at the end of 1950, when these children were all making their little nighttime scenes of the church, snow, and the moon?

With the Internet, you can get this kind of information pretty quickly. And sure enough! The last full moon in December 1950 was on Christmas Eve: December 24, at 10:24 a.m. UTC, or around 4:24 a.m. here in Missouri.

So . . . this was an actual scene from Christmas 1950. How about that.

I’m also tickled at all this line of thinking, because for several years at Christmas, Uncle Tom has mailed us Moon Over Me Magnetic Moon Calendar, Almanac Card, and MoonMaggy Fridge Magnets. The fridge magnet shows all the phases of the moon for the calendar year.

The chart itself, in its geometric form, has an aesthetic beauty to it. And it’s good to know what the moon is up to, even if you don’t believe in astrology. When is the night darkest? When is it brightest? When do you get to see those beautiful “fingernail” new moons hanging over the western sky in the evenings, with the earthshine on the dark portion, revealing its true spherical shape? When will the lunar eclipses be happening?

And that’s really about all on this subject. It was just fun to discover, among all those recipes for cinnamon coffee cake, chow-chow, oatmeal cookies, and Christmas fruitcake.

I’ve found some other interesting non-recipe items, too. Maybe I’ll find time to blog about them, as well.

Marie's Apple Cake

There are so many ways to make apfelkuchen, or “apple cake”! I suspect every ethnic German mother and grandmother has her own recipe. This is just one version—but I know you’ll love it. It’s easy to make. It’s a bit rustic, but you can dress it up with toppings.

Yeah, there’s a whole world of great German desserts out there, and “kuchens” come in all varieties and forms. (It’s not surprising, when you consider that kuchen means “cake,” and of course we have ten thousand types of cakes—sheet cakes, pancakes, crab cakes, coffee cakes, ice cream cakes, rice cakes, etc.)

This is a nice, easy, little apple cake recipe from my Grandma Schroeder’s best friend in the whole wide world, her crony from early girlhood through their entire lives, Marie (Weigand) Korsmeyer (1904–1999). She and her husband, Clay Korsmeyer, lived at 112 W. Atchison Street. The house is still there, across the street from my friend Laura’s house.

I got the recipe from my mom, who had apparently gotten it from Grandma—Edna Schroeder—who had apparently gotten it from Marie . . . even though Grandma clearly had her own recipe(s) for apple kuchen!

Oh, Marie!

Edna and Marie’s friendship resembled a “Lucy and Ethel” relationship in some ways; it was beautiful, lively, fun-filled, and true. I think whenever their shenanigans ended with “trouble,” they generally wound up having a good laugh over it. There are stories about them, as little girls, bingeing on green apples they had snitched from someone’s apple tree, and soon after, regretting it! It would become a hilarious story that got better and better with time.

Marie (left) and Edna (right), having "refreshments" in the backyard at 224 W. Elm, late 1970s or early 1980s. That was back when "poodle" haircuts were all the rage for ladies of a certain age.

Then there’s the story about them as mature adults, having a few too many martinis out in the backyard, and . . . well, that story will remain in the family. And the neighborhood bird population—they’re probably still telling that story, too. (Ha ha ha!)

Edna and Marie were practically sisters, growing up together in the early years of the 1900s on West Elm Street. To my dad and his brothers, Marie was another aunt. And to me, she was in the same category as my great aunts Minnie and Esther, and cousin Marguerite, in that same age group. No family get-together was complete without Marie’s cackling laughter.

I’ve altered the recipe slightly, mainly putting the wet ingredients and dry ingredients together, and adding a pinch of salt, but those are the only changes. Notice that the recipe calls for two cups of apples and one cup of flour—so get a sharp knife and chop the apples finely. (Marie, by the way, had superb knife skills.) Indeed, this cake can be rather crumbly because of all the yummy apple in it. It’s super moist, almost jammy.

It’s up to you if you want to peel the apples or leave skins on. I think it makes a prettier, more tender cake if you peel them. But if you want the fiber and nutrients, you needn’t peel the apples.

Nuts: I’d use black walnuts or pecans. Back in the day, black walnuts were free, if you were willing to hull them and bust them open and pick the nutmeats out. But you can use whatever nuts you want, or omit them altogether.

The batter is pretty stiff and sticky, but not to worry—the apples will provide moisture while this bakes. To spread the batter out in the pan, wet your hands with some water and use them to pat and smooth the surface. I use an 8 x 8 inch baking dish, prepared with some nonstick cooking spray.

It will get a little crisp on top; it’s done when the edges start pulling away from the pan and a toothpick comes out clean. You know. It will be moist and rather crumbly.

This is an excellent coffee cake for breakfast as well as a tasty dessert. For the latter, consider serving it hot, à la mode. Maybe you want to drizzle some icing over it, or garnish it with a bit of cinnamon sugar or powdered sugar.

Marie’s Apple Cake

In a medium bowl, cream together:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup shortening

Then mix in:

• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Set the bowl with the wet ingredients aside.

In a large bowl, combine:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Then mix in:

• 2 cups apples (about 2 large), cut finely (peel if desired) (Jonathan or Granny Smith recommended)
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup nuts, if desired

Then stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients/apples/nuts.

Spread into a greased [8 x 8”] cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes or until done.

And . . . think of Marie as you enjoy your cake.

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ADDENDA: For the record, here are the two Southside/Munichburg homes that Marie lived in.

Marie's first Munichburg home was 208 W. Elm, on the same block where my grandma grew up (at 215 and 220 W. Elm) and where my grandma and grandpa lived once they were married (at 224 W. Elm). Here's what Marie's girlhood home, 208 W. Elm, looked like in August 2007.

In the picture below (from Google Map's Street View, ca. 2021), Marie's girlhood home, 208 W. Elm, is the brick house at the right. Grandma's home (224 W. Elm) is the white-stucco house at far left. Today, only 224, 220, and 218 remain standing on that side of the block. I think 208 was razed sometime last year (2023). It was the last house on that end of the block to go. Being brick, it was the sturdiest. (I don't remember the demolition; Sue says I might have been in Columbia that day; the razing crew made quick work of it.)

Marie and her husband, Clay, lived at 112 W. Atchison, within easy walking distance from Elm Street. Here's what it looks like today, again with Google Street View, as of July 2023.

One more bit of information: Dad says that Marie's parents were from Cole Camp, Missouri. Her maiden name was Weigand. Dad says she also has Lumpe ancestors, too. Which is kind of interesting, since Dad and I will be at Cole Camp in April doing a talk at that community's Plattdeutsch club! Maybe one of Marie's relatives will be there.

Grandma Schroeder’s Peach Kuchen Recipe

Here is the venerable kuchen recipe from my grandma Edna Schroeder. It’s a family favorite; every time I make it, all the Schroeder-clan people ooh and ahh. I grew up understanding that a kuchen was a special, special thing.

From my youngest age, I remember our family going to visit Grandma in Jeff City, and if she’d made a kuchen, there’d be excitement (which Grandma herself helped to generate): “Look what I made for dessert!” “Ooh, a kuchen! What kind is it?” “Peach!” “Oooh, a peach kuchen, I can’t wait!” . . . If it was a larger family get-together, each group to arrive would go through the same ritual, so I often heard it numerous times in a day, as my uncle and aunt and cousins arrived, as Marie arrived, as anyone else came. “Look, Mom made a kuchen!” “What kind?” “Peach!” “Oh, boy!”

Apparently Grandma never wrote down the recipe, but fortunately my Aunt Carole made notes one day as Grandma was making it. I’m not much of a baker, but I’ve been plugging away trying to master this recipe for a few decades (hard to master when I don’t make it very often). But even when I’m not personally satisfied with the texture, it has always tasted incredibly good.

First, let us review our German. In German, Kuchen means “cake” or “something baked,” so the word applies to a huge variety of Germanic baked goodies. Think of how we use the word “cake” for a wide range of dishes—pancakes, birthday cake, cheesecake, crabcakes, sponge cake, coffee cake, angel food cake, pound cake, fruit cake . . . This explains why your German grandma’s kuchen is nothing like my German grandma’s kuchen.

Well, Grandma Schroeder’s kuchen is like this: it has a shortbread-cookie-like “crust,” which is topped with fresh fruit lubricated with a gooey custard matrix and baked; when that is fairly set, it is topped with meringue and browned. (The meringue topping explains why the type of fruit is always a mystery; you can’t tell what kind of fruit was used just by looking at it.)

This is a wonderful way to celebrate whatever kind of fruit is in season. Right now, the peaches are perfect. Lovely, sweet, divine peaches. So we’re making a peach kuchen in this post.

A typical serving of this dessert (or coffee cake) is a 3 x 3 inch square (so, 9 servings in a 9 x 9 inch baking dish). I often stretch this out, using more fruit and meringue, to a 9 x 13 inch size, for groups.

The biggest challenge I usually have with this recipe is getting the center of the fruit/custard portion to bake firm enough to have meringue spread over it, without also overcooking the crust. This recipe can (and should) use a variety of seasonal fruits, so the juiciness can vary a lot. Therefore, I advise reducing the amount of custard for juicy fruits like peaches—just drizzle it on, but don’t force yourself to pour it all on, if it will make a pool of “soup” in the middle. I have the best results with sliced apples (apple kuchen)—where the fruits are somewhat dry.

The final result should have, at the base, about ½ to ¾ inch crust/cake; then about ¾ to 1 inch of fruit, within a gooey matrix of custard; then, on top, about ¾ to 1 inch of meringue. The corner pieces will have the most cake; the center pieces will be the gooiest.

Grandma made all kinds of kuchens, depending on what was fresh—Concord grapes, plums, blueberries, peaches, and combinations of these. Dad says Grandma never deseeded her Concords; she just put them in whole and let people chew on the seeds(!) My own variations have included a banana kuchen with peanut butter in the crust (recipe is here), and a kuchen with sliced tart apples plus big golden raisins that I’d soaked overnight in vanilla–infused cognac. (Grandma would’ve loved that one!)

I have seen what are apparently very “authentic” German recipes for plum kuchens that skip the meringue and are much flatter and more spread out. These are made in 9 x 13 baking dishes or cookie sheets. The plums are washed, halved, pitted, and placed on the crust in a decorative, overlapping pattern. Some type of glaze (sometimes heated-up jam) is drizzled or brushed over the top, then it’s baked, and that’s that. You can find several recipes for this plum kuchen (Pflaumenkuchen) online. You can certainly do that with this recipe, simply omitting the meringue and making a wider, flatter dish.

The base of the kuchen, in many recipes, is made with a sweet yeast dough (similar to that used for cinnamon rolls), but that’s not the way my grandma made it.

By the way, we always assumed that Grandma’s kuchen was a recipe she learned from her mother, who immigrated from Germany, but I found a very similar recipe in a cookbook that my Grandma used in her high school Domestic Science (home ec) class. Indeed: that particular page of her book (p. 412) is firmly adhered to the facing page by hundred-year-old, dried-up cooking goo. (I didn’t dare try to peel the pages apart; instead, I found a scanned version of the book online.) Some of the many kuchen dough recipes and variations in that book are very similar, too. So perhaps Grandma learned this recipe from her high school cooking text, The Settlement Cook Book, 11th ed., 1921. (Digitized versions of several editions of this book are online at the Hathi Trust; here’s a link to the 1921 edition.)

So here you go, another family secret unveiled . . .

Grandma Schroeder’s Peach Kuchen Recipe

Overall ingredients list:

• 2 + ¼ cups flour (divided)
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• pinch salt
• ½ + ½ + ½ cup sugar (divided)
• ¾ stick butter
• 4 eggs (divided: 1 beaten; the other 3 separated)
• ½ + ⅓ cup milk (divided)
• 2–3 cups fresh peaches, sliced (or other fruit)
• ½ tsp. vanilla (optional)
• ¼ tsp. cream of tartar

1. Make the dough. Combine the following:

• 2 c. flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• pinch salt
• ½ cup sugar
• ¾ stick butter (it helps to use a pastry cutter and rather softened butter)

. . . then, add 1 beaten egg and enough milk (about ½ cup) to make it the consistency of cookie dough (e.g., rather stiff and sticky).

Spread the dough in the bottom and slightly up the sides of a 9 x 9 inch baking dish (Pyrex is good); with the dough so sticky, I spread it with moistened hands.

2. Make the custard. Separate the 3 eggs (reserving whites for meringue); beat together the 3 yolks, add ⅓ cup milk, ½ cup sugar, and about ¼ cup flour. This is for the custard matrix for fruit: depending on the juiciness of the fruit, consider making less, or using less milk, or including a whole egg instead of a couple of the yolks. (I usually make the full amount of custard; then whatever isn’t drizzled over the fruit in the kuchen I pour over additional/extra fruit in a couple of single-serving ramekins and cook in a bain-marie as a fruit custard.)

3. Fill the kuchen. Spread approx. 2–3 cups fresh fruit (sliced peaches, or whatever) evenly over the dough. It helps to gently press the fruit down into the kuchen; the crumb will raise and puff up, and the fruit will add moisture to the crumb. Drizzle custard on top of fruit. (See previous comment about not using too much custard—you don’t want it too full of liquid in the center.)

4. Bake at 350F for about 20–30 minutes. Watch it, because ovens vary; it’s done when the dough is cooked (browns) and the custard is relatively firm. Sometimes it never quite firms up due to the juices; it usually firms nicely with apples but rarely with grapes, blueberries, or peaches.

5. Make the meringue. This is a standard meringue recipe, as I don’t have any indication about how Grandma made her meringue. Beat the 3 room-temperature egg whites on medium with ½ tsp. vanilla (if using) and ¼ tsp. cream of tartar for about a minute (until soft peaks form); then switch to high speed and gradually add up to about ½ cup sugar; beat for about 4 minutes, or until shiny and stiff peaks form. If making meringue seems like kind of a pain, remember that Grandma used a manual rotary eggbeater.

6. Finish the kuchen. You’re in the home stretch, now. Spread the meringue carefully on top; dabbing it into artistic shapes, and return it to the oven to brown the top. Let it cool gradually. Store it in the refrigerator.

If it falls apart when you cut it, who cares? It's delicious! And I'm sure you'll love it.

. . . My people do.

Haben Wir Zusammengewesen!

. . . But wait, there’s more!

I’m still talking about our New Year’s Eve traditions. Here’s another one: We have a family theme song! I’ll bet you think I’m kidding—but I’m not!

Actually, it’s a “parting song,” and we sing it not just on New Year’s Eve, but at the end of potentially any family gathering. Indeed, we sang it out at Riverview Cemetery in 2000, after Grandma Schroeder’s interment ceremony—undoubtedly confusing to any who were unfamiliar with our customs!

But especially, we sing it at the end of the New Year’s Eve party. After the food, the drink, the conversation, the singing, the bell-ringing, and one-too-many mützens, this song is the cap to the evening.

When the first departing guests start brushing the powdered sugar from their clothes and putting on their coats, it is time to form a circle, join hands, and sing the family parting song. It was taught by my great-grandpa Albert Thomas to his daughters, who always sang it with great glee and vigor:

Haben wir zusammengewesen
Haben wir uns gefreuet
Ist der Vater kommen
Hat ein Stock einnommen
Hat uns wieder mal durch gebleuet
Ist der Vater kommen
Hat ein Stock einnommen
Hat uns wieder mal durch gebleuet.

We all got together
We had a good time
Then father came
Took up a stick
And thrashed us many times
Then father came
Took up a stick
And thrashed us many times.


I would love to know more about this song—where it came from, when it was composed, and who composed it, if that’s known. Does anyone else in the entire world even know of this song? (Click on it to see it bigger!)



I suspect it’s a children’s or “novelty” folksong, kind of like “John Jacob Jinkelheimer Schmidt.” But maybe it’s a Vaudeville or beer hall song. Maybe my great-grandfather picked it up in his boyhood in Germany, or maybe he learned it when he visited his family there in the 1920s. We don’t know.

If you are reading this, and you know this song or a version of it, please, please contact me! I want to learn more about it!

At any rate, he taught it to my grandma and her sisters, and they started the tradition of singing it at the end of our family gatherings. I can't tell you how tickled they were to sing it!



The style is remarkable: It is generally sung quietly, as if by children who are sharing a deliciously fun and mischievous secret . . . but the iterations of Hat! (pronounced like “hot!”) are sung explosively, vociferously, mimicking the blows of father’s stick and heightening the song’s novelty and excitement. Yeah, we really do shout it! (Again, it’s a lot like the explosively loud “La-la-la-la-la-la-las” in “John Jacob Jinkelheimer Schmidt.”)

It’s possible that the “stick” in the lyrics could be a reference to the switches Knecht Ruprecht shows to children before Christmas, to threaten them into good behavior.

But it makes me think of the story Grandma told of how she and her lifelong best friend, Marie Korsemeyer, at about age five, were naughty and picked a bunch of green apples, ate them—then promptly felt sick!

Traditionally, our family repeats the song once or twice. After the first rendition, Grandma or one of her sisters would generally sigh, shake her head, and explain, “We have to do it over. Someone wasn’t singing that time.” We do this in part to perform some mild, Schroeder-style hazing on any new members of the group (such as girlfriends and boyfriends), who are usually entirely bewildered by the song and its German lyrics. (I feign exasperation, and make a point of staring directly at the newcomers!)

Then, after another run-through, with people at least attempting to mouth the words, the comment is: “We sang it too loudly; that’s not the way Papa taught us; we have to sing it again. Softer!” (We still always make that complaint: “We sang it too loudly—we’ve gotta sing it again, only a lot softer, okay?”)

. . . In truth, we repeat it because we have so much fun laughing and singing it, and because we want to be together just a few more moments—before we must hug goodbye and go out into the bracing early air of January the first.



A technical note on my music transcription above: I couldn’t decide if the “Ist der” of the first “Ist der Vater kommen” should be a pickup to the repeated section, or beat one of it. If the latter, then the accented Hats would fall on the first beat of the measure, which I suppose is more straightforward. Hey, I don’t know. I guess it’s how you hear it. It could go either way.

Finally, as with everything else on my blog, please don’t copy this without giving credit to me and my blog. For one thing, I really do want people to be able to contact me if they know anything about this song!

Goodbye Sycamore

Dramatic changes in Munichburg are beginning. Today, the city's contractors have started the work for new sidewalks, curbs, and gutters on the two blocks of Broadway between the 50/63 Expressway and Dunklin Street.

The first order of business is to trim or cut down trees, some of which were interfering with power lines, or wrecking the sidewalks with their surface roots, or both.

Today I witnessed the demise of a big old sycamore that stood on the northwest corner of Broadway and W. Elm (right across the street from me, so I had good views).

My heart and my head are at war over this--my heart cries for the lovely tree, its long life, it's surviving the ice storm of 2007, and the shade it's given us all these years, particularly the shade it's given our neighbor's front porch over there. And besides, sycamores are one of my favorite kinds of trees. I love sycamores. They're gorgeous, tall, and strong. A little messy, but they make up for it in wonder and grace.

But my head knows that this tree was doomed from the minute it was planted. Indeed, my dad told me that when the then-neighbor-lady put it in the ground and still had the shovel in her hands, my grandma had walked across the street to tell her it was absolutely the wrong kind of tree in the wrong place: "That sycamore's going to get too tall! The electric company's going to come and butcher it because it will interfere with the power lines!"

And yes, it is--it was--right there on the corner, getting butchered and hacked at nearly every other year by those coarse fellows the electric company brings in from out of town to do their quick, sloppy work.

But today a local tree trimming company made short, careful, elegant work of taking it apart and turning it into mulch. I wonder what they do with the biggest limbs and the massive chunks of bole?

It was really something to see. But my heart does ache today.

It's true, we're excited to get new sidewalks and gutters--but anytime a big ol' tree has to be felled in the prime of life, it's sad.

Following are a series of pictures I took from our top window. They started about 1:30 this afternoon, and it was all over by about 4:15.

New Springerle Roller

I recently told you about my new/old springerle roller! I’d been looking for a good, wooden, “vintage” one (=“antique”), and we found this new one at an antiques store in Hermann.

I have other rollers, but for some reason or other, they weren’t quite perfect.




My First Roller

My first roller was given to me as a gift—for which I’m eternally grateful, since it got me to start making springerles in the first place. (Think: “gateway drug.”)

It must be a fairly modern roller, not old at all. The carvings are very, ah . . . minimalist. I don’t think they were even technically “carved.” Instead, I think they were created with a Dremel tool or some such. Mass-produced. You can find these types of rollers for a fairly low price online. I suspect it’s, um, “imported.”

The problem with this roller is that I have a hard time figuring out what the pictures are supposed to represent. This carving, I’m pretty sure, is supposed to be of some kind of bird:




And this one, if you use your imagination, could be of a butterfly. . . . Or maybe it’s an owl—?




But this one: You have to let your imagination “go” in order to get anything representational out of it. Sue thinks it looks like a skull-and-crossbones!




Well, maybe. I guess if you spend a lot of time looking at cubistic art, you could figure out what it’s supposed to represent. . . . Or maybe you need to drink a lot of eggnog or some other kind of “Christmas cheer”!

Here’s another carving on that roller that confounds me: Every time I look at it, I think, “Tiki God.”




. . . But I doubt that’s what it’s “supposed” to be. One thing I’m certain of: A Tiki God is not standard Christmas imagery!


My Second Roller

I bought this from the nice lady who sells springerles and rollers each year at the Old Munichburg Oktoberfest. She was at the Hermann Kristkindl Markt this year, too. She’s incredible!

The springerle rolling pins she sells are manufactured by a company called House on the Hill, and you really should check them out. They make reproduction springerle rollers and molds, out of some kind of resin or plastic, which are exact copies of antique wooden originals.




Here’s the pin I have.

Their rollers are ornate and beautiful. And yet . . . they are not wooden. And if you’re like me, and you’re a bit sloppy about reapplying flour or cornstarch to the roller between each “roll,” then the dough tends to stick after a while. And with all those ornate indentations, well . . .




And hey, don’t you just like the feel of wood in your hands? Wouldn’t you rather have a unique, handmade, wooden tool than a plastic one? For me, the answer is “yes” and “yes.”

Hence my continuing search.

My Third Roller

It isn’t really “mine.” Like the family Christmas tree, it’s an heirloom for which I’m only a temporary caretaker.

Dad had this with the stuff that he got from his mom’s house when she passed away. But this past year, he gave it to me: His grandmother’s springerle roller. (Or one of them, anyway.)




I’ve told you about Wilhelmine Thomas before—remember the red cabbage story? Also, hers is one of my favorite lebkuchen recipes.

The deal with this roller is that it’s a historic treasure, delicate; it might even be something she brought with her from Germany—and I don’t want to use it.

At some point (I’m guessing the 1960s), Grandma mounted it onto a simple, fabric-covered piece of cardboard using two tiny brads, and framed it. This means that even in the sixties, Grandma was thinking it was too old to be used, and took it out of service at that time.




It would be pretty cheeky of me to (carefully!) remove the brads and unmount it, then use it for cooking.




Especially since there’s historic springerle dough still stuck on it!

Sue and I joked about this: What if you could take a DNA sample from that fossilized dough and make a clone of Great-Grandma Thomas’s springerles!




But seriously—it’s an old treasure, and I would be heartsick if I tried using it, and the wooden handle split or something. Better to leave it as a museum piece, eh—?


The New Springerle Roller

It’s not as ornate as the ones House on the Hill sells, but (if memory serves) the patterns on this roller seem more like the patterns I recall when I was a little girl, when grandmas and other ladies of their generation were making springerles.

Does that sound funny? I mean, the rollers from House on the Hill are very nice—exquisite—and maybe “too” ornate. The patterns on this roller are a bit simpler.

Who knows—maybe this very roller had belonged to one of my own Central Missouri forbears, and ended up at that antiques store in Hermann!

At any rate, I really love the pictures on this “new” roller. It’s big on animals, which is just right for me. There’s a rooster (which makes me think of old German immigrant churches, and the passages leading up to Matthew 26.75).

There are hooved animals, including an elk or reindeer.




Cooler than that (to my thinking), there’s a nice bushy-tailed squirrel!




And even more remarkable, there’s an insect—a wasp or bee! Yay! (“. . . All creatures, great and small”!)




There are neat plants, too. This looks like a thistle, though with my imagination it could also be an agave, or a rattlesnake master, or something like that.




This might be an edelweiss—what do you think? Or some kind of primrose?




This year, with our bounty of springerle rollers, we made some lovely, lovely cookies, and I’m going to have a great time sharing them!

(By the way, click here for the springerle recipe I use; it’s slightly nontraditional—but hey, I’ve gotten no complaints!)