• Home
  • Our Shop
  • About Us
    • About MKB
    • Our Shop
    • MKB Board
    • Editorial Board and MKB Administrators
    • Our Contributors
    • For Bloggers: Join MKB
    • Books and Products from Our Members
    • Cultural Resources
    • Contact Us
  • Product Promotion Services
  • Blog Hops & Series
    • Holidays Around the World
      • Martin Luther King Day
      • Chinese New Year
      • Purim
      • Passover
      • Easter Around the World
      • Ramadan
      • Hajj (Eid al Adha)
      • Rosh Hashanah
      • Day of the Dead
      • Diwali
      • Hanukkah
      • Christmas in Different Lands
    • Heritage Months
      • Black History Month
      • Women’s History Month
      • Asian-Pacific Islander Heritage Month
      • Middle Eastern and North African Heritage Month
      • Hispanic Heritage Month
      • Native American Heritage Month
    • Blogging Carnivals
    • Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop
    • Global Learning for Kids
  • Resources for Raising Global Citizens
  • Privacy Policy

Multicultural Kid Blogs

For families and educators raising world citizens, through arts, activities, crafts, food, language, and love.

How to Make Polish Gingerbread Cookies

December 12, 2016 by Hanna Cheda

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

If you’re stressed out because all your neighbours have their houses decorated already, their presents bought and their perfect holiday pictures up on Facebook while you are still cleaning up after Thanksgiving dinner, then Poland is your place to be. In Poland, Christmas preparations don’t start early.

Poles don’t decorate the tree in November and they don’t bother themselves with moving Elf on the Shelf all around the house for a month before Christmas. Actually, everything “Christmassy” in Poland is done in one day: Christmas Eve, the 24th of December; “maybe because we are a hard working, busy-loving nation, that loves to decorate the tree, work, cook, and eat early dinner all in one day” as Olga, Polish expat writer, explains on her blog Milk, Crafts and Honesty.

However, there’s one Polish Christmas tradition that requires early preparation: gingerbread cookies (pierniczki). They are usually made in late November/early December because they have to be stored for a few weeks to become soft and yummy.

Polish gingerbread cookies

RELATED POST: Christmas Desserts Around the World

Polish Gingerbread Cookies

Gingerbread is a traditional treat that has been prepared in Poland since late Middle Ages, when 11th century crusaders brought ginger and other exotic spices to Europe from the Middle East. Due to high price of those imported goods, gingerbread cake was as luxury treat for medieval folks as French champagne and caviar is for us today.

If Trip Advisor had existed back then, definitely port cities would have made all the “Top 10 destinations to get gingebread in Europe”. In Poland, the biggest port city and the wealthiest port city back then was Gdańsk, so it was where ginger and all the other exotic spices arrived first.

Gdansk was linked by a river with Toruń, a town that was already well known for yummy baked goods. Since then Toruń has become the gingebread spot number one in Poland. In the old days it was believed that the longer you stored your gingerbread dough, the better it was when you finally made cookies. In some households gingebread dough was prepared on the day of birth of a daughter and it was baked on her wedding day.

Polish gingerbread cookies

RELATED POST: Christmas Books Around the World

There was also a fierce competition between Toruń and the city of Nuremberg in Germany over who makes better gingerbread cookies. The recipe was kept secret and they even sent spies to a rival town to get it. Nowadays, priorities have clearly changed; food bloggers in Poland share tons of pictures of their gingerbread cookies on every social media site known to man since late November.

There are many gingerbread cookies recipes on the Internet, but we’ve decided to follow a recipe from a friend who is as bad cook as I am but her gingerbread cookies always turn out yummy.

This gingerbread cookies recipe requires:

  • 3 cups of flour
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 3/4 cup of honey
  • Half slice of butter (approx. 75g)
  • 1 teaspoon of cacao powder
  • 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoons of baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon of ginger

Polish Gingerbread cookies

Can you spy the reindeer ears? 

Before you bake:

  • Put all the ingredients on your kitchen table, countertop or wherever you’re going to bake.
  • Give your children some Christmas accessories; you need some jolly spirit! However, if you don’t want to wash all the cookies ingredients from their best Christmas jumpers, head accessories are enough. If your kids, like mine, think that life is a beach and happily wander around the house just in their pajamas bottoms/undies, that’s even better.
  • Take a picture of your children & the ingredients while your kitchen is still clean and cute and post it on a social media site of your choice. Just in case your gingerbread cookies are another #Pinterestfail to add to your CV, you’ll at least have a cute Christmasy picture on your feed.

Polish gingerbread cookies

Preparation:

  • Heat butter, honey and sugar in a pan, stirring all the time to prevent burning.

Polish gingerbread cookies

  • Leave it to cool for a while. (If you live in cold climate, you can put it on your window ledge. However, if you live on ground floor like us, watch out. Once my mum left a soup just for 5 minutes and it was gone. Someone had a free dinner that night.)
  • Put the mix in a bowl. Add to the mix: flour, cinnamon, soda, cacao powder, ginger and eggs.

Polish gingerbread cookies

  • Mix the whole thing very well.
https://multiculturalkidblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/15389497_215800118861165_421449893622579200_n.mp4
  •  Put the mix in the fridge for 3 hours. (Unless, of course, you want to keep the dough for your children’s wedding, like Poles in Medieval times.)
  • After that step, everyone I know and their mama got a smooth mix that they could roll out and then cut into different shapes. I got THIS:

Polish gingerbread cookies

However, it was not a problem for my children; they happily used a straw and cookie forms to consume the “yummy sticky stuff” directly from the table. But if you have followed the instructions correctly, you should then bake your gingerbread cookies in 180 degrees for 15 minutes. Gingerbread cookies can be so beautiful!

Polish gingerbread cookies

Check out these fun children’s books about gingerbread cookies:

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, Multicultural Kid Blogs receives a small commission at no extra charge to you.

Lily Fox and the Gingerbread Cookie

The Gingerbread Man Loose at Christmas

The Gingerbread Man

Richard Scarry’s The Gingerbread Man 

Learn more about Christmas around the world!

Happy Holidays!

Christmas in Different Lands 2015 | Multicultural Kid Blogs

Welcome to our fourth annual Christmas in Different Lands series! This year each participating blogger will focus on a different country, sharing a traditional dish and more about Christmas in that country. For even more glimpses of global Christmas celebrations, see our series from previous years (2013, 2014, and 2015), plus follow our Christmas board on Pinterest!

Follow Multicultural Kid Blogs’s board Christmas Around the World on Pinterest.

December 2
Multicultural Baby on Multicultural Kid Blogs: Japan – Strawberry Christmas Cake

December 5
Crafty Moms Share: Nigeria – Jollof Rice

December 7
English Wife Indian Life: India – Christmas Plum Cake

December 8
Living Ideas: Indonesia – Tumpeng nasi kuning

December 9
Creative World of Varya: Lebanon

December 12
Hanna Cheda on Multicultural Kid Blogs: Poland

December 13
the piri-piri lexicon: Portugal

December 14
Raising a Trilingual Child: Italy

December 15
Let the Journey Begin: Latvia
Spanglish Monkey: Spain

December 16
Pack-n-Go Girls: Austria

December 19
Uno Zwei Tutu on Multicultural Kid Blogs: Colombia

December 20
Multicultural Baby: Paraguay

December 21
La Clase de Sra. DuFault: Chile

December 22
Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes: Puerto Rico

December 23
All Done Monkey: Haiti

Celebrate Christmas Around the World Printable Pack from Multicultural Kid Blogs

Don’t miss our other posts about Christmas in different lands, plus our printable pack Celebrate Christmas Around the World, on sale now!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts

Hanna Cheda

Latest posts by Hanna Cheda (see all)

  • The Loneliness of Expat Fatherhood - June 12, 2017
  • How to Make Polish Gingerbread Cookies - December 12, 2016
  • How to Pass on Hispanic Heritage as an Expat - September 14, 2016

Filed Under: Christmas, Family Activities, Holidays Around the World, Parenting, Poland Tagged With: christmas, Christmas around the world, cooking with kids, family activities, history, Holidays Around the World, international cooking, international recipes, multicultural cooking with kids, Poland, Polish Christmas cookies, Polish traditions, recipes

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Comments

  1. Ilze says

    December 12, 2016 at 2:56 am

    Sounds like the Polish gingerbread is similar to the Latvian one, the earlier you make it the better! I haven’ t tried making any though, we usually just buy the tastiest gingerbread ever from our favorite bakery 🙂

Follow Us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on Google+Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on PinterestFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on Instagram

Anti-Bullying Resource FREE Download

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Grab Our Button!

grab button for Multicultural Kid Blogs
<div class="multicultural-kid-blogs-button" style="width: 200px; margin: 0 auto;"> <a href="https://multiculturalkidblogs.com/" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://multiculturalkidblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/button-take-3.jpg" alt="Multicultural Kid Blogs" width="200" height="200" /> </a> </div>
Multicultural Children's Book Day Co-Host

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT