Speiser-Merz Christmas Cookies

This page was last updated December 17, 2004.

We have a long tradition of making Christmas cookies in the Speiser-Merz family. Babette Habann Speiser (1858-1947) is the earliest person I know of who made the cookies. She most likely learned to make them from her mother Anna Barbara "Babette" Merz Straub (1833-1895).

My favorite is Springerle. Springerle are an anise-flavored cookie made using wooden Springerle molds. Below you will see a picture of Babette Habann Speiser making Springerle in 1936. The newspaper caption said her molds were almost 100 years old, leading me to believe the Merz family tradition of making Springerle goes back several generations.

Springerle cookies date back centuries in Bavaria and Austria. More information on their history can be found here - http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/CookieHistory.htm. Scroll toward the bottom of the page for the Springerle history.

For me, the tradition of making the family recipes starts with Babette Habann Speiser to her daughter & my grandmother Lydia Speiser Reuther, to my father Calvin Reuther, to me Catherine Reuther.

After Lydia retired from cookie making, Cal took it up, often with my assistance. After Cal died in 2000, I started making them on my own in 2002. While Dad and I often talked about taking a picture of Lydia, he, and I making Springerle, and then after she died in 1996, of he and I, we just never got to it.

Here is a picture of Babette making Springerle in 1936, a few pictures of Lydia and Calvin, and then me making Springerle in 2004.

All pictures are from the collection of Catherine Reuther unless otherwise noted.

Babette Speiser in 1936	Lydia Reuther in her kitchen in Fairfield, CT, abt 1980	Calvin and Lydia in Fairfield, in the 1970's?	Catherine mixing Springerle in Cal & Jane's old mixer from 1953	Trimming the dough off the mold
After removing the cookies from the mold	Cutting apart the cookies

 

Return to the Top.