A Springerle Cookie Heritage

Heather´s family has been making springerle cookies for over 170 years. Her mother taught her how to make them, and her mother before her, and so the story goes.

Our History

Lancaster Central Market

The Springerle House stand opened at Lancster Central Market in 1998. At the time, we were, as far as we know, the only bakery in Lancaster County, Pa., and one of the few in the country that sold springerle cookies. From the very beginning, we decided to offer our recipe free of charge – we want to know that we’ve done our part to encourage, educate, and share our passion with springerle bakers everywhere!

In the early days at the market stand, we sold primarily springerle cookies, our famous jumbo chocolate chunk cookies and gold-toned handpainted ornaments. Soon we added our ginger snaps, and they garnered quite a following! Through customer suggestions, we added color to our handpainted ornaments, and began to import cookie molds from Switzerland so our customers could make their own springerle cookies at home.

Springerle House Tea & Cookie Café

In 2003, The Springerle House Tea and Cookie Café opened in the idyllic town of Strasburg, PA.  Although it specialized in 60+ varieties of looseleaf tea, fresh-ground brewed coffee & espresso drinks, and of course, lots of homemade from-scratch baked goods, the café’s central focus remained the springerle cookies. After years of research, we had learned how to make our own reproduction cookie molds, and began selling them at in our cafe an at our cookie making classes.

A few years later we made a decision to close the market stand to concentrate on the café. As time went on, the business of making & shipping springerle cookies, ornaments, & cookie molds grew and grew, eventually making it difficult to balance the demands of the cookie business and the café. In January, 2015, we made the difficult decision to close our brick-and-mortar and focus on the online business of what we do best: all things springerle!

We still take pride in making our springerle cookies one at a time, cutting them out by hand just as our ancestors did. We love making cookies, we value our staff, and we appreciate our customers! Please read on for a bit of the fascinating history of springerle cookies.

The Springerle Cookie Story

For over a thousand years in Europe, hand-carved molds have been used to imprint “picture cookies.” These cookies have been historically used as betrothal tokens, tellers of tales and to celebrate daily life. Springerle molds first came to Lancaster County circa 1710 among the most treasured possessions of the Pennsylvania German immigrants. Our Springerle cookies and ornaments are made from replicas of molds painstakingly copied from original molds in museums in Germany and Switzerland. This tradition dates back to approximately the 15th century in Germany, and first came to the U.S. around 1710. While there were traditionally a number of German bakeries that sold the cookies in Lancaster and Philadelphia, almost all of them closed long ago. In 1998, it seemed that the tradition of springerle cookie making in our heavily German area was destined to go with them, and be lost to time. This was the impetus for Heather to start her business: continuing a tradition she loved, with the opportunity to pass it on to future generations.

We use only the finest ingredients to make our cookies, and follow the traditional European recipe. We offer Springerle cookies in lemon, orange, orange vanilla, hazelnut, chocolate, almond, vanilla, traditional anise, and many other exciting flavors. Some are accented with edible gold paint. Our ornaments are made of a durable ash/paper pulp mixture and hand painted. We hope you enjoy this taste of the past!

To those of you who have been with us for years, thank you, thank you for your loyal patronage. To those of you who are new friends, welcome!