Lisa from Paris, Kentucky, grew up eating a German Christmas cookie at a friend’s house in Miami, Florida. This deep-fried, bow-tie-shaped pastry was made with butter, lemon, and rum, and dusted with powdered sugar. The family called them Hobelspäne (or Hobelspan in the singular). Hobelspäne translates directly as “wood shavings” or “planing chips,” after the way the twisted dough curls in the fryer. A recipe for essentially the same cookie turns up in 1795, in a cookbook from Lower Saxony by Friederike Luise Löffler. These treats belong to the category of traditional German deep-fried pastry called Schmalzgebäck or Schmalzgebäckstreifen, which is literally “lard-pastry strips.” This is part of a complete episode.
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