Making Perníčky, or Czech gingerbread cookies, is a nice change from trying the standard American recipes. These Czech Christmas cookies are less sweet, lack ginger, and feature a mild anise flavor in the spice mixture.
(This recipe was originally published in December 2019, but was updated with new content in 2020).
I fell in love with perníčky, or Czech gingerbread cookies, in Prague. They’re quite different from American gingerbread cookies, which contain ginger and molasses, two ingredients not found in the Czech version.
On the contrary, perníčky have a mild anise flavor. This comes from the combination of anise seeds, star anise, and fennel seeds. I'm usually not a fan of licorice or other anise-flavored foods, but I actually LOVE perníčky. I was determined to make them myself after returning from Prague.
Both the texture and flavor are extremely similar to what we sampled in Prague. The result is a soft, chewy texture with a mild anise flavor. It has a milder flavor profile than spice-forward Pfeffernusse (German iced spice cookies).
Ingredient notes
- Spices: For these Czech gingerbread cookies you will need a variety of spices including cloves (whole or ground), cinnamon (½ a stick or ground), fennel seeds, anise seeds, and star anise. You’ll want to use a spice grinder or mortar and pestle to grind them into a powder.
- Honey: Any mild-flavored honey like clover or orange blossom will work well in this recipe.
- Cocoa Powder: You’ll need a small amount of plain cocoa powder for the topping on these perníčky. It does not impart chocolate flavor, but instead provides a nice golden color.
How to make it
Grind the spices together in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. In a medium mixing bowl combine the spices with flour and baking soda.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat together the eggs and powdered sugar. Add the honey and melted butter, and continue to mix until smooth. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix until it starts coming together into a dry and crumbly dough.
Carefully dump it out of the bowl onto a large work surface and knead gently by hand until all of the crumbs are absorbed, and the dough is a smooth, cohesive, and sticky mass. The dough is ready immediately to roll out and cut into shapes!
Preheat your oven to 250°F and line 3 to 4 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Lightly dust your work surface with flour, cut off a smaller piece of dough, and roll it out on the floured surface until about ⅛-inch thick. Lightly dust with more flour as needed as you work with the dough. Cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters, and arrange the cut cookies onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between cookies.
After rolling and cutting all the dough, gather the dough scraps into a ball and roll them out again, and cut more cookies. Repeat as needed.
Bake your Czech gingerbread cookies one pan at a time on the center rack of the oven for 14 minutes. Meanwhile, make the topping by beating together the egg and cocoa powder until smooth.
After removing a pan of cookies from the oven, immediately use a pastry brush to brush the egg-cocoa mixture evenly over the top of each cookie while they are still hot. This will provide color and shine. Repeat with the remaining cookies, and allow them to cool completely before decorating.
To make the royal icing, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment combine the egg white and powdered sugar. Beat until smooth. If the mixture is too thick, beat in water by the teaspoonful.
Next, fit a pastry bag with a #2 or #3 round pastry tip, and transfer the royal icing into the prepared pastry bag. Decorate your Czech Christmas cookies with royal icing. Allow icing to dry completely before storing in tin containers in a cool, dry place for 3 weeks or more.
Please scroll to the bottom of the post for the full recipe (in a printable recipe card) including ingredient amounts and detailed instructions.
Expert tips
Traditionally many perníčky doughs must rest at least overnight before rolling out and baking, and yet others need time after baking before they soften enough to be eaten. This recipe is ready to bake and eat immediately.
I use gingerbread man cutters of varying sizes purchased at Perníčkův sen (Gingerbread Man's Dream) in Prague, as well as a Gingerdead Man cutter and stamp one of my best friends gave me for Christmas a while back. I also make snowflake and Christmas ornament shaped perníčky, but use whatever cutters you prefer.
If you don’t have enough baking sheets to prep all your Czech gingerbread cookies at once, you can reuse the pans for additional batches of cookies once the preliminary batches are transferred to cooling racks to cool.
Other seasonal recipes you may like
- Pfeffernüsse (German Iced Spice Cookies)
- Basler Läckerli / Leckerli (Swiss Spiced Cookie Bars)
- Vanillekipferl (Austrian Vanilla Crescent Cookies)
- Peppermint Biscotti
- Capezzoli di Venere (Nipples of Venus)
- Pain d’Epices (French Gingerbread)
- Cranberry Curd Tart
Tried this recipe? Please leave a star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating in the recipe card below and/or a review in the comments section further down the page. You can also follow me on social media on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest!
Perníčky (Czech Gingerbread Cookies)
Ingredients
Dough:
- 5 whole cloves or ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ stick of cinnamon or ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon whole fennel seeds
- ¼ teaspoon whole anise seeds
- 1 star anise
- 4 cups (560 grams) all purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- 3 large eggs
- 1 ¼ cups (150 grams) powdered sugar
- ⅓ cup (110 grams) honey
- 4 tablespoons (55 grams) unsalted butter, melted
Topping:
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
Royal Icing:
- 1 egg white from large egg
- 2 cups (240 grams) powdered sugar
- Water as needed
Instructions
- Grind the spices together in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. In a medium mixing bowl combine spices with flour and baking soda.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat together the eggs and powdered sugar (start on low speed first so you don’t get a cloud of powdered sugar). Beat until frothy and the sugar is dissolved, scraping down the sides once or twice as needed. Add the honey and melted butter, and continue to mix until smooth. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix until it starts coming together into a dry and crumbly dough.
- Carefully dump it out of the bowl onto a large work surface and knead gently by hand until all of the crumbs are absorbed, and the dough is a smooth, cohesive, and sticky mass. The dough is ready immediately to roll out and cut into shapes.
- Preheat the oven to 250°F. Line 3 to 4 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Lightly dust work surface with flour, cut off a smaller piece of dough, and roll it out on the floured surface until about ⅛-inch thick. Lightly dust with more flour as needed as you work with the dough. Cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters, and arrange the cut cookies onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between cookies. After rolling and cutting all the dough, gather the dough scraps into a ball and roll them out again, and cut more cookies. Repeat as needed.
- Bake cookies one pan at a time on the center rack of the oven for 14 minutes. Meanwhile, make the topping by beating together the egg and cocoa powder until smooth (this may take a little effort to get out all the lumps; use the back of a spoon if needed to press on the lumps). After removing a pan of cookies from the oven, immediately use a pastry brush to brush the egg-cocoa mixture evenly over the top of each cookie (while they are still hot). This will provide color and shine. Repeat with the remaining cookies, and allow them to cool completely before decorating.
- To make the royal icing, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment combine the egg white and powdered sugar. Beat until smooth. If the mixture is too thick (it likely will be) beat in water by the teaspoonful until desired consistency is reached (2 to 3 teaspoons should be enough).
- Fit a pastry bag with a #2 or #3 round pastry tip, and transfer royal icing into prepared pastry bag. Make sure any extra icing is covered in a bowl, as it will dry out quickly when exposed to air. Decorate cookies with royal icing. Allow icing to dry completely before storing in tin containers in a cool, dry place for 3 weeks or more.
Notes
- If you don’t have enough baking sheets to prep them all at once, you can reuse the pans for additional batches of cookies once the preliminary batches are transferred to cooling racks to cool.
- You will likely yield more icing than you will need depending on how much decoration you pipe onto your cookies.
- Adapted from Czech Cookbook
Nutrition
*All nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary with brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes and more.*
J Hammel
I doubled the spice mix. I'm glad I did because it is a very mild flavor. I brushed the tops with the egg mixture, but I was left with brush marks. The dough did roll out easily and the cutouts kept their shape.
John Urbanovsky
I tried this recipe, and I enjoyed the results, but I found the dough much drier and less sticky than expected, and rolling it out was laborious. The scraps would not recombine well.
What should I do? Another egg? More honey? I live in an area that generally has very little humidity, and I'm a novice baker.
The flavor was wonderful, and my dad said they reminded him of his aunt's from when he was a kid.
Victoria
Hi John,
I'm glad you enjoyed the flavor of these cookies, but I'm sorry the dough turned out a bit dry. I am curious, how did you measure the flour? Did you measure in cups or weigh in grams? Sometimes when you measure in cups, depending on your method of measuring, you might inadvertently pack too much flour into the cup, which would result in a dry dough. This is my best guess as to what may have occurred in your case, but please let me know. If you don't already own a digital kitchen scale, it is one of my most recommended kitchen tools and I think it will definitely help your baking down the road! You'll achieve more uniform results if you weigh ingredients (if given weight measurements) than using volume measurements. I hope this helps.
John Urbanovsky
I did use a kitchen scale, unfortunately, which is why I was surprised. I did use large eggs, but I'm wondering if they weren't large enough? I know baking is very scientific, so I didn't want to start adding things to the recipe without understanding the reason it's done the way it is.
Victoria
Hi John, that's helpful to know! Usually the egg sizes are pretty standard so if they were marked as large that should have been the same as what I've used. In this case since I'm honestly not sure why it was dry if you weighed all the ingredients, I would suggest next time instead of adding more of anything, maybe just scale back the flour a bit (maybe start with 475 or 500 grams instead and then add more in that final mixing step if you feel it needs it). See if you can obtain a better texture that way.
John Urbanovsky
That hadn't even occurred to me, haha, thank you very much. I'll have to come back and share how it goes.
Mary Beth
Liked the unusual spice combination, but did you really mean to have the temp at 250? I set at 325, and came out perfect after 14 minutes. Also, dough was way too soft to roll right after mixing; chilling the dough for an hour made it easy to roll and put on trays. Good cookie!
Victoria
Hi Mary Beth,
Believe it or not 250°F is the intended temperature in the recipe (not a typo), however I'm glad to hear that it bakes well at higher temperatures too! For me the dough has always rolled out just fine after mixing but refrigerating for a bit if it's soft is a great tip. I'm glad you enjoyed the cookies!
Anoush
Wow these look delicious.
Camille
These were SO good! I normally stay away from cloves and star anise because they're not my favorite spices but in this cookie they were so good! I can't wait to try them for myself!
April Blake
The skeleton cookies are so cute! Are there indentions in the cookie for the icing or did you ice them freehand?
Victoria
Thank you! I used a cutter/stamp combo to make those. You use one side to cut the shape and the other presses into the cookie and creates indentations. Then you just fill in the grooves with royal icing! Yay!! I’m pretty sure I will be making these annually at Christmas from now on. They’re so much fun!