Mrs. Crecelius’s Springer Cakes

This is a recipe for Springerle cookies, or as the Pennsylvania Dutch call them, Schpringerkuche. It comes to us from Mrs. Crecelius, wife of a famous nineteenth-century folk artist and one-time tavern keeper in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her recipe, dated 1874, is preserved in an account book of the Bern Academy, which also doubled as a recipe book for the Epler family of Leesport, Berks County, Pennsylvania.