Soft Iced Toruń Gingerbread

Pierniki Toruńskie

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Preparation info
  • Makes

    18 to 20

    cookies
    • Difficulty

      Easy

Appears in
Dobre Dobre: Baking from Poland and Beyond

By Laurel Kratochvila

Published 2025

  • About

The city of Toruń in Western Poland is famous for a very oddly shaped soft piernik—gingerbread. They’re called Katarzynki, but that name is trademarked by the town’s gingerbread factory. To me, Katarzynki look a bit like two-headed mutant snowmen, but regardless of what your gingerbread Rorschach tells you, they’re worth a bake.

Centuries ago, Toruń was an important and rich stop on the Hanseatic trade routes that went between Western Europe and Asia, hence it had a lot of th