Make me a Bi-lie-ber - of the Swiss pastry kind

November 13, 2023 7:55 AM

I recently returned from Switzerland, where I fell in love with cushiony, gingerbready pastries known as biber or biberli. I would love to try a recipe at home.

However, most recipes that I've found online mention an almond filling or similar, and the ones I had definitely didn't have a filling. Some also mention being crispy, but what I had was soft and spongey. So, I'm not 100% sure that what I had was a biber, but the wrapper on one (which I unfortunately threw away) definitely had "biber" in the title.

Does it sound like what I had was, indeed, and biber or biberli, and if so, does anyone have a recipe they love that they could share? Thank you!

posted by Ms. Toad to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

Here's what The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets has to say about it:

Appenzeller Biberli, a lightly spiced dough shaped as a round or a rectangle and filled with almond paste, originated in Appenzell but now enjoys country-wide popularity. It is available in supermarkets year-round but is most prevalent at the holiday season, when pastry shops use a special mold to impress an image of St. Nicholas or other seasonal design on the cookie's top. The treat bags that children receive for St. Nicholas Day or Christmas might contain a biberli or its unfilled cousin, a type of gingerbread, either soft or hard, that is often formed into traditional holiday shapes.

So it sounds like what you had was the "unfilled cousin", in its soft form. Perhaps a Swiss gingerbread (or lebkuchen) recipe would get you close to the flavor profile you're looking for?
posted by graphweaver at 8:42 AM on November 13, 2023

I think what you want is essentially biberli without the filling. It's a soft, spongy gingerbread cookie, made with honey, molasses (but not dark molasses as are commonly used in North America) and a mix of spices. You want a recipe that tells you to heat up the sugars in a pot before you add it to the dough, which is important for the texture. I'd try maybe half as much molasses if you're using the dark kind, replacing that with brown sugar or more honey or else the molasses flavour will overpower the rest of the flavours.

You might also call this lebkuchen, but that's a very broad term that covers a lot of different cookies and cakes in different places, so I think a biberli recipe will be your best bet. I can't vouch for this one in particular, but it looks about right to me. You can just make balls of the dough and bake them as you would any other cookie.
posted by ssg at 9:46 AM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I haven't found a recipe for biber without filling yet. But this one (with filling) says the name means 'little beavers' anyone know?
https://recipegoldmine.com/chrcook/swiss-biberli-recipe.html
posted by Lookinguppy at 10:35 AM on November 16, 2023