Clements Kitchen Chronicles Re-Tradition: The Belsnickle

Hudson’s pretending to be a dino-gnome. (McGraw Cabin, Mount Rainier)

This post is about six weeks late but we are deep in winter, hygge-mode. Dawn is leisurely breaking long after seven, frost is coating the car windows and cups of tea and coffee are synonymous to hand warmers at the moment. We have had the occasional snow flurries, our afternoons have been lazy by the fireplace so it feels only right to maintain a healthy stream of cookies in the kitchen. Lucas’ favorite is a chewy molasses, while Hudson’s is any found with a generous dollop of frosting. (Preferred ratio is 2:1, that being ½ inch of frosting to the ¼ inch of cookie).The compromise I have drawn is making Belsnickle, a spicier relative to the gingerbread. So yes, Christmas has faded but we are keeping the merriment alive with some kitchen indulgences.

Belsnicke hails from the Pennsylvania Dutch, who originated from the southwestern region of Germany. These are my mothers people. I looked up, on the-all-knowing Google, why Pennsylvania Dutch were called Dutch when in fact they came from Germanic lineage. Apparently there are too plausible explanations. One is, people were a lot more general in the seventeen and eighteen-hundreds and Dutch referred to the region people spoke Deutsch. Which nowadays encompasses the Netherlands south to Switzerland. The other explanation is one of simple translation error, meaning the existing settlers assumed the new settlers were Dutch and from the Netherlands specifically and not from the broader region. Either way, I probably should have known this.

Up on Mount Rainier, post exploring Paradise.

Anyway the Pennsylvania Dutch have some cool traditions and some not so cool traditions. For instance, I accept their Belsnickle cookies but I do not accept their Belsnickle folklore man who is a slightly less demonic version of Krampus. If you don’t know who Krampus is well, he is basically Satan? I mean he is supposed to be a half-demon, half-goat creature that comes at Christmas to punish misbehaving children…. sooo, yea. You can see why this post didn’t feel right to publish amidst advent when we celebrate the hope, joy, love, and peace Christ brought into the world.

(I went the icing route this time, which was fine. But the family preference is buttercream!)

Back to the cookies, these things are gems. They are sweet and spicy and are the perfect combination of soft and chewy. You can decorate with either buttercream frosting or royal icing, personally I’m a buttercream gal. I love making these at Christmas time because they are an integral tradition on Christmas Eve for my family. We would gather at the dining table with bowls of frosting, shakers of sprinkles and decorate for hours while we listened to the best and worst of Christmas songs. This was the first year I decided I wanted to extend their presence and make them more a winter tradition, not just for December.

A few weeks back we took Hudson and Jack to a cabin up at Mount Rainier that Lucas’ family owns. It’s a tiny A-frame cabin hidden under Doug and Hemlock Firs. Early in our marriage Lucas and I would visit quarterly for it’s quiet. The place has no cell service or internet, it does have one landline phone that has recently been upgraded from a rotary. In recent years our visits have been fewer and this trip was the first time bringing both boys. The cabin is a great base for some beautiful day hikes and visiting Longmire and Paradise. After tromping around outside for the majority of the day, the cabin has become one of my favorite places to rest and eat. Food just tastes better on mountains. (Actually altitude does change our taste buds due to the pressure and dry air. It decreases our ability to taste sugar and salt by about 30%.)

The cabin’s kitchen has a tiny range, a toaster oven from 1960, and a microwave. My meal planning has leveled up over the years but I still love treating the cabin like a cooking show challenge. This trip I decided I would introduce some home baked goods to the trip to simplify the meal process. The challenge now is entertaining two toddlers, while making meals in a teeny space. So we brought up sourdough english muffins, a cinnamon crumb coffee cake and the prize, some Belsnickle cookies. I have a thing for bringing cookies on family outings. I just feel like the experience gets leveled up.

There was much excitement this weekend between snow and cookies.

We arrived late in the evening on Friday and once we got the car unloaded and beds set up we sat down and broke metaphorical bread with our cookies. Hudson had helped me bake and decorate the Belsnickle back at home so this was a moment of great anticipation for him. These are the traditions I am aiming to make and keep. I love that the cookies have a meaning and historical context from my family, but I love that we get to adapt and edit the meaning and moments to fit this family. Maybe I just liked sneaky a cookie with my coffee the following morning, either way it’s a tradition worth keeping.

There isn’t a good recipe online, so here is a picture of the recipe.