Holiday baking: North by Northwest wants your recipes to share

As the holiday season warms up, North by Northwestis sharing asweet holiday recipeand storyfrom one of the show's favourite guests Chef MarcoRopke, proprietor of thePastry Training Centre ofVancouver.

In turn,Sheryl MacKay and the team at North by Northwest hopelisteners will share their favourite holidayrecipes with the show and other listnersas well.

• North By Northwest Cooking Club
• Browse all CBC's B.C. recipes

"We understand, and hope you dotoo, that many of these recipes are old family favourites, and they haveoriginal instructions that are not as detailed as cookbooks are today," said MacKay.

"But that's half the fun,immersing yourself in a recipe that has been made forgenerations, with lots of love, patience, ingenuity and possibly a bit ofadlibbing."

Each week North by Northwest will compile the received recipes, and create another "chapter" of the Sweet Recipe Exchange, which will be offered to listeners.

Since this is a recipe exchange, listeners are asked to check their recipes for any typos and to make sure the ingredients andinstructions are as accurate as possible, so others can recreate the recipe and enjoy it.

Listeners can email their recipes and storiesto nxnw@cbc.ca before midnight on Dec. 13. Please include the origin of the recipe if you know that as well.

Everyone who sends a recipe will be put into a contest to win new cookbooks.

Here is a recipe from the first chapter of theNorth by Northwest Sweet Recipe Exchange, from Chef Marco Ropke, proprietor of the Pastry Training Centre ofVancouver

Cinnamon Stars (ZimtSterne)

Chef Ropke's story:

Eventually I left Hamburg and became a travelingPastry Chef working in some of the top hotels in the world. After more than thirty years inpastry kitchens, I can`t even imagine how many cinnamon stars I have produced in my life.But I still look forward to enjoying them every year - luckily these days I only need a fewdozen for friends and family!

Yield about 24 pieces:

• 250 g marzipan (of the best quality, should consist of at least 60% almonds)
• 40 g ground almonds
• 10 g organic cake and pastry flour
• 5 g cinnamon powder
• 1 pc (30 g) egg white
• 200 g icing sugar (approx.)

Knead all together the marzipan, almond powder, cake flour and the cinnamonpowder. Roll out this dough until approx. 1 cm thick.Combine the icing sugar and the egg white together until it resembles a spreadableroyal icing, this topping should be neither too dry (no shine) or too runny (toomessy), adjust the consistency as you see fit with either more icing sugar or eggwhite. Spread the icing thinly over the rolled out marzipan dough.Using a star shaped cutter (or round cutter to cut out half-moons), cut out thecinnamon stars and place them on a baking pan.It is common in Germany to purchase cinnamon star cookie cutters, which is a starshaped cutter which can be pulled apart for easy removal of the cookie. Without theproper cutter it can be a lttle bit tricky to ply the cookie out of the cutter, butdipping the cutter in cold water prior to cutting, should facilitate the removal andspeedy cutting of the cookies.Bake the cinnamon stars at very low heat (300 F) for only about 7 9 min, no coloron the top just a bit of drying of the icing and a slight firming of of the cookieedges.