Tula pryanik (Russian Tula gingerbread)
Its breathtaking aroma, unmistakable taste and unique appearance make Tula pryanik a special treat. The fluffy honey dough with winter spices and the sweet and sour filling of jam characterize its taste. Its spicy-sweet fragrance is simply impossible to resist. With its enchanting stamped surface and sweet marble sugar glaze, Tula gingerbread is at the same time too good to bite. According to this recipe you can make the most popular Russian pryanik yourself.
Servings 6 pryaniki
Ingredients
- 150 g honey
- 100 g butter
- 150 g sugar
- 2 eggs
- approx. 530 g flour
- 7 g baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ginger powder
- 1 pinch of nutmeg
- 1 pinch of salt
- approx. 120 g jam (any)
- flour for the work surface
for the glaze
- 100 g sugar
- 50 ml water
- 3 drops of lemon juice
Instructions
- Place honey, butter, sugar, cinnamon, ginger powder, nutmeg and salt in a mixing bowl and heat (do not boil!) the ingredients slowly over hot water, stirring, until the butter and sugar have melted. Then let the mixture cool to warm.
- Add eggs to the cooled honey mixture and whisk.
- Add baking soda as well as flour in batches and knead into a very soft, somewhat sticky dough.
- Dust the work surface with flour. Divide the dough into smaller pieces of equal size (I made 12 pieces) and roll each piece out to a square or oval about 0.7 cm thick.
- Place half of the rolled out dough pieces on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, leaving plenty of space between them, and brush them with jam in the center, leaving about 1 cm of clean border from each side of the dough piece. Place a matching piece of dough without jam on top of each piece of dough with jam and press the edge down on all sides with a fork. If you have leftover dough, you can use it to decorate the gingerbread.
- Bake the Tula pryaniki in a preheated oven at 200 °C top and bottom heat for about 15 minutes and let them cool down.
Making the sugar glaze
- Add sugar and water to a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly so that the sugar dissolves before it reaches a boil.
- Once the sugar syrup boils, add lemon juice and stir briefly.
- Then cook the sugar glaze over medium heat, without stirring it, until it reaches 110 °C, and let it cool to about 80 °C.
Glazing the Tula pryaniki
- Brush the glaze on the pryaniki quickly but carefully with a pastry brush and let them dry.
Notes
- Depending on your taste, you can omit the spices in the recipe or use other spices instead.
- You can take any good quality honey for the recipe.
- The amount of flour given may vary. Therefore, add flour in portions until the dough gets the necessary consistency. It should be very soft and somewhat sticky.
- Do not knead the dough too long, but only until it gets a homogeneous consistency.
- Instead of jam, you can fill the Tula pryanik with sweetened condensed milk.
- You can shape and decorate the Tula pryaniki as you like. You can make one big pryanik as well as many small gingerbreads from the dough.
- Depending on the size of the gingerbread, the specified baking time may vary greatly.
- Do not bake the Tula gingerbreads longer than necessary, otherwise they may taste dry. Use a thin wooden skewer to check if they are done baking.
- The temperature of the glaze to which it must be cooked is very important. It is best to use a kitchen thermometer to measure.
- Do not cover the gingerbread with the sugar glaze until they have cooled down.
- The time to cool the pryaniki and glaze is not included in the preparation time.
- Note the detailed tips and tricks for making Tula gingerbread at the top of the post.