Kozuli: recipe traditional Christmas gingerbread

Recipe for Archangel gingerbread — ROE — a lot. I will share those enjoyed by our family and which I learned from my mom. I was involved in the production of ROE from early childhood – first painted mother baked kozuli, and now, as an adult, took over the baton from mom and bake them myself every new year. This is our kind Northern family tradition, and I'd be happy if she become Your family, and fill the new year with a feeling of unforgettable magic of a winter fairy tale!



 

Making a Christmas gingerbread Arkhangelsk is a very long process which involves three stages:

1. Preparation of the test.

2. Cakes.

3. Decorating baked cakes with icing.

Each of these stages cannot be done in a hurry or in the course of business as usual – nothing happens. Your attitude will affect the quality of the carrot. Before each stage, you must smile, be freed from unnecessary thoughts and worries, and focus completely on this creative process, and the creation of the carrot to be in a peaceful state. For example, silently — to myself — to read prayers or to say good wishes to those people whom You give the gift of gingerbread. Then ROE will be only joy, health and happiness. And Get rewarded with the smiles of those who gave them to You, as well as the unique taste and beauty of the resulting gingerbread, harmony and peace in Your home.

Make the dough when no one will disturb or distract You – in our family it was always late at night when the kids are asleep. The dough was adults without children, as this process is very difficult and requires accuracy and precision. But ROE cut with cookie cutter and decorate them with icing is something we can do together with the kids the whole family!

The first stage. Make the batter for the ROEFor the manufacture of the test You will need:

— 3-3,5 cups of sugar, a glass of cooled boiled water, about 2 kg of flour (it must be sifted through a sieve), pack of 200 -250 gr. butter quality butter or margarine (better to do on the oil), 2 eggs, 1 tbsp of baking soda slaked with vinegar, spices for gingerbread (ground cloves, cinnamon, ginger, coriander).

How to make the dough:

Step 1. 2-2,5 cups of sugar pour 1 Cup of cold boiled water and put on medium heat. Prepare syrup.

Cut butter into small pieces.

Step 2. Simultaneously on another burner to burn through the metal pan 1 Cup of sugar until brown. Do this on low heat with constant stirring. It is best to stir or handle of a metal spoon, or knife (so the sugar doesn't stick). The sugar will first melt to a liquid of brown color, then you will see the foam, it will boil and smoke. Give a little boil, turn off the burner and immediately proceed to step 3.

 

Step 3. Pour it into the burnt sugar syrup while stirring with a spoon the resulting mixture. Do this very slowly and carefully, without haste.

 

Step 4. Adding to the resulting mixture of chopped pieces of butter and stir to obtain a homogeneous liquid. Put chill on the balcony or out the window.

While the mixture is cooled to a warm state in cold weather, soak the dishes, otherwise the sugar will harden and will be difficult to clean. Continue preparing the dough.

Step 5. Put in another pot large size spices to taste. We usually put two tablespoons of spices: 1 tbsp ground cinnamon 1 tbsp ground cloves. Buy cloves whole and milled themselves before cooking gingerbread – it turns out more fragrant than are sold in the shops ready ground cloves. You can use other spices – ginger, coriander or ready spice mixture for gingerbread.

Step 6. Put in a saucepan 1 tablespoon of baking soda (Gasim vinegar on it).

Step 7. Whisk 2 eggs with a mixer or whisk. Add to the same pan.

And then pour into the pan of warm liquid that in step 4 we set out into the cold to cool. Stir it carefully.

Step 8. Dough. Begin to add in a pan of flour. Note the time on the timer, as batch need to spend at least an hour. Be sure to sift the flour through a sieve before mixing. Add flour very small portions, stir with a spoon or mixer. As needed flour is difficult to predict, it is necessary to feel – but about 1, 5-1,8 kg.

 





 

When the dough will become quite stiff, begin to knead it by mixer, and by hand. Knead for an hour straight. If You feel even after half an hour that the dough is ready – still continue to knead. Properly done, the dough will go to cracks during baking. When kneading put in our living dough your positive thoughts, talking to myself good wishes to those people who will eat these cakes, reciting the rosary – that is, doing all that will help You to bring yourself into a state of peace, joy and gratitude to the world, nature, thank you to my family and friends.

Kneading dough requires a lot of physical effort, so long to this fact was attracted to men.

 

After an hour of thorough mixing dough, You'll have a beautiful loaf dense homogeneous consistency. It is similar to wet clay with silk gloss finish, which is very pleasant to stroke with the hand. The dough should not stick to your hands. Wrap the dough in a package, make package and put the dough in the refrigerator on the bottom shelf. The dough should soak in the cold for 2 weeks. If You do not have time to make the dough, let it sit in the cold for at least a day.

 

Small addition: my mother was not clear initially specified proportions of ingredients in kosulino test — it "chuvstvovala" (like my grandmother) and have done things "by instinct". For example, sometimes put in the dough 2 eggs and 3 eggs. And soda took 3/4 of a teaspoon. Flour sometimes took 1, 5 kg, sometimes 1, 8 kg is not measured by the scale. as determined by its consistency. But this is "aerobatics" for which we need the experience of baking the goat. At the initial stage it is better to make the dough one by one and the same recipe many times.

Second stage. Cut out the dough and bake kozuliFor baking cakes You will need: cookie cutters or cardboard templates to cut out the figures, the rolling pin.

65 ready-made templates for the gingerbread You can download the article "Stencils for cakes" on my site "home path" — http://rodnaya-tropinka.ru/trafarety-dlya-pryanikov/. And in this article You will be able to visit the gingerbread ball and see the real Northern kozuli fabulous.

Step 1. Beforehand, take out the dough from the cold and put it on 8-12 hours to warm up at room temperature.

Step 2. Cut off dough pieces and roll them with a rolling pin into layers with a thickness of about 5 mm, not more.

Step 3. On cardboard template or with ready cut out shapes of the figures. In the center of the reservoir put large figures on the sides – small. Try to place the figure so as to use the entire area of the layer of dough.

 

Step 4. Bake kozuli in the oven at 180 degrees for about 5 minutes (the exact time depends on Your oven).

 

 





 

How to know if baked gingerbread?

— If the carrot after 5 minutes of baking is the color of butter toffee, then it's not ready yet, and still need to hold it in the oven for another 2 minutes. If the cakes after 5 minutes of baking are of brown color of milk chocolate – so they are ready and they can be removed from the oven.

— Keep in mind that the carrots that You pull from the oven will be slightly soft, but ruddy. Gingerbread will still ripen — dry air during the day. And then become more solid. Put the baked cakes onto a hard surface and let them sit for a day.

— In my modern oven for baking at 180 degrees with the ventilation required 7 minutes, not 5 minutes in mom's oven. You've got to try and notice specific "Your" time and to record it for later in the recipe of ROE.

— If gingerbread to overdo in the oven, they a day will be hard as a rock. If they nethergate in the oven — the surface of the ROE in the future will shrink and it will look ugly and uneven. Each oven has its own character — so be sure to note the time during which Your kozuli was in the oven, when Your first baking. And then in the future either remember it (if everything is OK it will), or will correct it.

Supplement as an option. In our family it is customary to bake cakes with a matte surface, as I described above. If You want to get gingerbread with a glossy surface – they should be greased before baking egg yolk or egg yolk, diluted and well mixed with 1 tablespoon water. My mother sometimes smeared the surface of the cakes and one protein. Try different options and choose the one You like best.

 The third stage. Kozuli decorate with icingFor the icing You will need: 1 protein, 1 lemon, 1 raw beetroot, 1 Cup of powdered sugar (pre-sifted through a sieve). The powder you can buy or make your own from granulated sugar.

Step 1. Whisk with a mixer or whisk one protein. You need to stir them very carefully, because badly beaten egg white will give bubbles for decorating the cake.

 

Step 2. Gradually add small portions of powdered sugar to the whites and continue whisking. Turned the white glaze.

 

Step 3. Drips in the glaze a few drops of lemon juice. The lemon juice is added to give the glaze Shine and slightly sour taste. The white glaze finish.

Detachable ¼ of the frosting into a separate dish and we will cook it pink glaze.

Step 4. Prepare the pink frosting. This three piece raw beets on a fine grater, squeeze the juice and add a few drops of this juice in a bowl for pink frosting. Stir. Add the beet juice until the desired pink color.

Now add food coloring to get the different colors of glaze, but we at home never use them and decorate gingerbread only traditional colors – white and pink — and only use natural products.

Step 5. Decorate the gingerbread.

To decorate cakes traditionally involve children from the very young to teenagers. This is a very exciting creative process!

In the North the cakes usually do not fill the background with glaze stains and paint patterns on it – straight lines, wavy lines, curls, dots, crosses, zigzags.

 

Paint glaze on the surface of the gingerbread, you can use:

 

A) sticks (since childhood, I drew back with a sharp end of a wooden brush), often dipping it in the glaze and during operation, wiping the excess frosting off her linen napkin

B) a normal brush for painting with natural bristles.

C) you can pour the glaze in a small plastic bag to do in the area of the hole and draw it as a cooking bag,

D) for thin lines, use a wooden toothpick

D) using the prepared pastry bag for decorating cakes and pastries.

 





 

 

These are the methods that we use. Even when I was very young, I was never put on the ROE with your fingers – that we have not accepted. Decorate small kids kozuli it with a stick, placing a large point and drawing a large line. If you draw with your finger, then ROE will be clumsy, sloppy, not ours, not North. If you need something to Tinker with – wetted brush to paint in the glass of water, remove from the brush the excess water with a linen napkin. And otpravlyaem wet brush the contours of the figure.

Small trick: if You want the frosting turned out snowy, then sprinkle the carrot with sugar immediately after painting, when the glaze is not yet dry. When the icing hardens — shake the sugar. Get furry and fluffy as the snow pattern on Your ROE.

Enjoyable and exciting You creativity!

And at the end of the article a bit about the history of these cakes from an article by Stepan Pisakhov "the goat"

About kozuli"the Passing of the old way of life carries with him the mystery of the origin of the Christmas goat. Long wound up for the Christmas bake kozuli. But why they are aiming for Christmas only? And where is the name ROE? It is to this day questions... Our anthropologists have missed them by, probably because he came to Arkhangelsk in the summer when the ROE does not happen. I'll try to say a few words about the ROE. Maybe someone will respond and you will know the beginning of ROE.

The most ancient kozuli — Kholmogory and the Mezen — from the black dough, sometimes colored white test. Kholmogorskaya kozuli resemble deer. Dough is sculptured a figure on four legs, a head, a Bush of horns branched, on the horns of apples, on apples birds, or rather the wings of birds, made from white dough (Apple with wings reminiscent of the depiction of the winged sun). And the whole kosola seems transferred from a very old pagan world. Seems to be some kind of occult writing in this strangely beautiful figure. The size of the ROE can be 5-6 inches. Smaller kozuli do without the apples on the horns, but only with birds (birds resemble the hand with spread fingers). Bake kozuli and small in size — about an inch, simplified drawing, or trying to give them a resemblance to a cow, a horse (sometimes on horseback). Professor Zelinsky in 1913 noticed that the tiny ROE in form and size very similar to the shape of the stone age.

In the Mezen district, but small, similar Kholmogorskaya, flat bake kozuli: roll dough in a long strip with a thickness of half a pencil and roll it in different pictures, sometimes unexpectedly similar to the sacred Lotus in a wavy environment, reminiscent of the shining. There are also birds on the nest, and others.

In the spring of 1914, at my request, the old woman took to bungle kozuli. Unrolled from the test thread and began to fold the figure, whispering something. I said, "What, grandmother, whisper?" The old woman stopped and said sternly: "you don't mess with, if desired kozuli". Did the whispers of the old woman any relation to the goat, I don't know. The old woman explained. Others pleaded ignorance.

In Arkhangelsk, kozuli are baked from gingerbread dough, cut iron shapes (gingerbread silhouettes) and decorated (cut) icing, white and colored (often pink), abundantly ablepsia "gold" and "Poipu". Shape, made of iron, sometimes quite thick, persist for a long time, passing from generation to generation. Inquiries failed to establish the prescription of forms to be 200 years old, but of course there are forms and a much greater limitation. Have Had. Pet. P-form howl from her mother, grandmother, etc. and other masters of the ROE the most ancient pictures extant. Masulinity and Kotelniki often do not know how to draw with a pencil, and take a stick or pipe with the icing and the silhouette of the carrot, repeating what I had seen and taken over from their elders, they do amazing beauty of the drawings.

In 1913 or 1914, I saw a woman-masulinity on the market kosulu depicting eagle. On his breast the letter "a" and one stick (Alexander 1). Asked her: "Why do you have the eagle with the letter "A" and a wand? Need "N" and two sticks". And heard in reply: "And just because I have to. My mother Yes, my grandmother used to make the letter "a" Yes, one stick — so it should be. And what tell you?" Changes are in the form of confectionery. There the masters invent new forms and to Excel in fancy cuts, there is little regard for established patterns.

Bake kozuli begin in October. In early December kozuli appear in bakeries and confectioneries. In mid-December they fill all the display cases and bakery shelves. The size of a ROE — half to 10-12 inches. Their cost — from a penny to the ruble, and the more pretentious wares are pastry chefs are up to 10 rubles and more.

Before Christmas kozuli fill the market. Traders goat line up in rows and deploy their boxes, offering buyers a wide choice. The huge number of parcels with goat was distributed in Russia and abroad.

Much in the Arkhangelsk region have been preserved from very ancient times. It seems to me that ROE Mezen and Kholmogory (and in several other counties) are a legacy of the local pervonachalnogo. It is possible that those who came here the Novgorodians and Muscovites brought gingerbread. And from ancient kozuli of black dough and stick could reveal our kosula. But, maybe, the carrot brought to the North by foreigners and is adapted to replace the pagan cookie to the Christian holiday.

Drawings are the most ancient of forms — the star, the angel, the shepherd, a basket (with gifts), birds close to human animals, tree, vines, flowers, deer with sledge, Leo (the lion as king of beasts, and maybe it was influenced by English or Norwegian). Later kozuli — Amazon, driver, dog kennel, cat. And appeared over the last decades — the steamship, the locomotive, cyclist, airplane. And after 1920 — the hammer and sickle and the grandfather with the slogan "proletarians of all countries, unite!". In 1925, I saw in the market kosulu with a new image of the eagle: the shape of the stick is the same as before, only on the eagle's breast of the hammer and sickle, cross cut, and on the crown — "RSFSR".

In the past, 1926 I met in Moscow N. D. Vinogradov, brought together a large and, it seems, the only in Russia collection of gingerbread as examples of folk art. Seeing as N. D. Vinogradov lovingly and carefully refers to this kind of folk art, I set myself the task — to collect him a complete collection of ROE. And maybe with N. D. Vinogradov, and others for sensible people can figure out their origin.

From the collection of S. G. Pisakhov Stories, Essays, Letters. / Ser. Russian North. — Arkhangelsk, North-Western book publishing house, 1985.published

Author: Vlasina Asya V. P. S. And remember, only by changing their consumption — together we change the world! ©

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