Sweet Rails
Christmas Baking

As every year before Christmas, I would like to share a Christmas recipe with you.

These cookies are called Eisenbahner in German and used to be a traditional Christmas pastry in Austria. Today, you don’t see it very often anymore. The name is quite difficult to translate into English. Eisenbahn = railroad, so it should actually be something like “railroad cookies” – but you have to admit that it sounds awful! I chose the name “sweet rails” because they say that the shape of the cookies resembles railroad tracks.
I admit that I hadn’t known about this Austrian Christmas specialty for a long time either. I only came across it while researching information about Johann Strauss Jr. while preparing an article about the King of Waltzes. However, I’m not sure if Adele Strauss used to bake this pastry for her husband – I don’t think so, because the composer had a phobia of traveling by train… 🙂

SWEET RAILS
We Need:
For the dough:
200 g flour
a pinch of baking powder
75 g sifted powdered sugar
1 vanilla sugar
125 g softened butter
2 egg yolks
For the marzipan:
300 g marzipan
2 egg whites
1 vanilla sugar
For the filling:
300 g currant jam

Method:

Mix the flour with the baking powder and sift it into a bowl. Gradually add the remaining ingredients and knead the dough with a hand mixer. Wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest in a cool place for approx. 40 minutes. Then knead the dough briefly and roll it out on a floured work surface into a rectangle measuring 20 x 35 cm. Cut the dough into 4 strips (5 x 35 cm) and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.
Coarsely grate the marzipan and place it in a bowl. Beat the egg whites until stiff, add them to the marzipan together with the vanilla sugar and mix with a mixer until smooth. Fill a piping bag with a star nozzle with the marzipan mixture and pipe it around the edge of each strip of dough, including the short sides. Bake in an oven preheated to 200°C for 16-18 minutes.
Meanwhile, cook the jam for about 1 minute, stirring constantly, remove from the heat and then carefully spoon or pour it onto the baked dough into the gaps between the marzipan edges. As soon as the jam has set, cut the strips into pieces about 2 cm wide.

If you think that Strauss just sat at home because of his phobia, you are mistaken:
It is truly paradoxical that the story of Russia’s first railway cannot be told without this composer. The first Russian railway line ran from the capital, St. Petersburg, to the tsar’s summer residence in Tsarskoye Selo. The Russian Railway Company wanted to offer its guests something special, so it extended the line to Pavlovsk (30 km from St. Petersburg), where they built a huge music pavilion, named it Vauxhall after the English model, and in 1856, hired Johann Strauss Jr. for the first time. Strauss sensed his chance for success and good earnings, overcame his panic fear of traveling by train and boarded a mail train that took him via Berlin to Szczecin. There, he boarded a ship and continued on to St. Petersburg. It was not until 1862 that he was able to travel by train directly from Vienna to St. Petersburg.

For eleven years, Strauss traveled to Russia to perform his waltzes every weekend and holiday evening – until the last train departed – from mid-May to October. Every year, he spent five months away from home, and in Vienna, rumors spread that their beloved “Schani” was now going by the name Ivan…

Text: © Copyright Ingrid, Travelpotpourri
Fotos: © Copyright Ingrid, Travelpotpourri