My baking this year has been on the lighter side, both in terms of colour and flavour. So it is time to change that. Meet Magenbrot, a spicy chocolate treat from Switzerland.
The name Magenbrot translates as the rather curious “stomach bread”. Not, of course, that this means there is some sort of offal in there. The name comes from the combination of spices such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and aniseed used in Magenbrot which were thought to improve digestion, in a similar vein to those strong herbal post-dinner drinks you encounter in Alpine countries. The question of how many pieces of sweet Magenbrot you could eat without upsetting your stomach remains unclear, but I rather suspect the answer is not “as much as you want”.
Magenbrot is not just a purely Swiss affair, and I have memories of it from visiting funfairs in Germany as an exchange student. I even brought a couple of bags home from a two-week exchange visit, but made the mistake of not eating it all quickly enough, and it went hard. Lesson learned! I also remember Magenbrot being incredibly addictive. The pieces were wonderfully spicy, and with that classic combination of spices which seems to be the essence of the festive period, and the fact those pieces are quite small means you can keep having another piece. And another piece. And another piece…
I have made this recipe with two surprising ingredients. First, the main liquid here is cold espresso. However this does not have much of an influence on the final flavour – it just means the chocolate flavour has just a little more depth to it, but you certainly don’t taste coffee when you bit into it.
The other odd thing you’ll see here is potassium carbonate. This is a raising agent used in traditional German baking, and provides a lot of lift to the dough when making cookies. You could use baking powder or baking soda instead of the potassium carbonate (note I haven’t tried this recipe with either), but I quite like using these quirky raising agents in my baking, and these days they are fairly easy to track down online. If you want some other recipes using it, you could try German Aachner Printen or Danish brunkager.
The actual process of making Magenbrot is fairly easy and will be familiar if you’ve ever made Italian cantucci. Essentially you make a dough, roll it flat, cut strips, bake them, then cut the resulting “logs” into pieces. At this point, the dough doesn’t seem sweet enough, and will seem a bit dry. Then you coat the lot in a sweet chocolate glaze, which provides the necessary sweetness and softens the Magenbrot. The result is absolutely delicious, which is a good thing since this recipe will leave you facing dozens and dozens and dozens of pieces of Magenbrot. Hopefully you’ve got the stomach to cope with it all!
Magenbrot will benefit from being kept for a few days in an airtight container, as the spice flavour will develop. If you keep it too long, it can dry out, but you can easily solve this by adding a slice or two of fresh bread to soften up the Magenbrot again.
To make Magenbrot (makes 80-90 pieces) (adapted from here)
For the dough:
• 250g syrup (I used 2/3 light and 1/3 dark)
• 75g butter
• 1 medium egg
• 125ml cold espresso
• 500g bread flour
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons Lebkuchen or mixed spices
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon potassium carbonate
For the glaze:
• 200g dark chocolate
• 40g butter
• 200ml water
• 500g icing sugar
• 4 pinches ground cinnamon
• 2 pinches ground cloves
• 2 pinches ground nutmeg
1. Make the dough. Put the syrup and butter in a pan. Heat to melt the butter, mix and leave to cool.
2. Add the potassium carbonate to the cold espresso and stir until dissolved.
3. Put the cooled syrup and egg in a large bowl. Mix well. Add the flour, cocoa and spices, then the coffee. Mix and knead to a dough. Add more flour if needed (I used an extra 50g).
4. Flatten the dough into a square, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge overnight.
5. Preheat the oven to 180°C (355°F). Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
6. Roll out the dough to a long rectangle. The length doesn’t matter, but it should be 1cm thick and 20cm wide. Cut the dough into five long strips of 4cm width.
7. Bake the strips for 20 minutes, turning the baking sheet half-way. I baked them in two batches – one of two strips, and one of three strips – and be sure to leave plenty of space for the dough to expand during baking.
8. When baked, immediately brush each log all over with cold water. This will help to soften the bread. Once cool enough to handle comfortably, cut each into diagonal slices, 1cm thick.
9. Make the glaze. In a pan heat the chocolate, butter, water and spices. Beat well to ensure it is smooth, but do not let it boil. In the meantime, sift the icing sugar into a large bowl, then add the chocolate mixture and beat until smooth.
10. Time to glaze. Put around 10 pieces of the bread in a separate bowl, and add a generous amount of the hot glaze. Mix to ensure the pieces as well-coated, then put each cookie on a wire rack to dry. Keep going in batches until all the cookies are glazed. If the icing gets too thick, add 1 tablespoon of water and heat it up again until to becomes thin.
LondonEats 