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When dreams come true

Grandma Vroni's biscuit recipe: Classic cut-out butter biscuits

Ingredients:

  • 400 g flour
  • 250 g butter
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 120 g sugar
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 1 packet vanilla sugar
  • 1 shot glass of rum
  • Grated zest of one lemon

Preparation:

1. Sift the flour. Make a well in the middle. Add the sugar, egg yolk, vanilla sugar, lemon zest, rum and salt and spread the butter in flakes on the flour.

2. Knead all the ingredients into a smooth dough and form a ball. Then wrap it in aluminium foil and leave to cool for 2 hours.

3. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line the baking tray with baking paper.

4. Roll out the dough on a floured work surface to a thickness of approx. 3 mm and cut out the biscuits.

5. Place the biscuits on the baking tray and decorate.

6. Bake the biscuits for 10 - 15 minutes until golden brown. Let them cool and enjoy.

Every detail counts – Making-of stop motion film

The Liebherr Christmas bakery was mainly produced as a stop motion film – one of the most intricate ways of producing a film. There are more than 2,500 individual pictures, a few clever tricks, many helping hands and a lot of preparatory work behind 2 minutes of film. Because every detail counts and every wrong move sets things back by hours.

In principle, a stop motion film is easy to make: you take a picture of an object, then you move the object a little, take another picture and finally, you string together all the photos. The more pictures per take there are, the smaller are the movements.

The Liebherr Christmas bakery consists of 2,787 individual images, which are then played at a speed of 24 images per second. Before this can happen, though, such a production requires a lot of preparation. Every single scene is sketched out in advance so it is clear what exactly happens when and how, which camera angle is necessary and which props are needed. Because at the time of the actual shoot, every movement has to be done correctly. Nothing can be moved or rearranged unconsciously. The camera has to remain in position constantly as well and only records a precisely defined area. Besides 16 models from the Liebherr shop, about 40 other props were also used.

  • Kitchen feeling in the studio
    In order to not have to turn a real kitchen into a Christmas bakery construction site during the entire production period, the kitchen was rebuilt in the studio on a scale almost true to the original. For this purpose, pictures of the original kitchen were taken, then printed on large canvases and attached to a wooden construction. In this way, a real kitchen feeling could be maintained throughout the entire studio production.

    Kitchen feeling in the studio

    In order to not have to turn a real kitchen into a Christmas bakery construction site during the entire production period, the kitchen was rebuilt in the studio on a scale almost true to the original. For this purpose, pictures of the original kitchen were taken, then printed on large canvases and attached to a wooden construction. In this way, a real kitchen feeling could be maintained throughout the entire studio production.

  • Good props are worth their weight in gold
    To ensure that the composition of the ingredients was perfectly suitable for production, some things had to be adapted. For example, the sugar was mixed with water. This made the consistency suitable so it could be shovelled with a mining excavator. The butter was frozen overnight so that it could be fastened to the reachstacker with a fishing line without melting and the egg had to be blown out first so it could be transported through the material handling machine. Only the dough was fake. Here, modelling sand was used instead.

    Good props are worth their weight in gold

    To ensure that the composition of the ingredients was perfectly suitable for production, some things had to be adapted. For example, the sugar was mixed with water. This made the consistency suitable so it could be shovelled with a mining excavator. The butter was frozen overnight so that it could be fastened to the reachstacker with a fishing line without melting and the egg had to be blown out first so it could be transported through the material handling machine. Only the dough was fake. Here, modelling sand was used instead.

  • We need your consent This video is provided by Google*. When you load this video, your data, including your IP address, is transmitted to Google, and may be stored and processed by Google, also for its own purposes, outside the EU or the EEA and thus in a third country, in particular in the USA**. We have no influence on further data processing by Google. By clicking on “ACCEPT”, you consent to the data transmission to Google for this video pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 point a GDPR. If you do not want to consent to each YouTube video individually in the future and want to be able to load them without this blocker, you can also select “Always accept YouTube videos” and thus also consent to the respectively associated data transmissions to Google for all other YouTube videos that you will access on our website in the future. You can withdraw given consents at any time with effect for the future and thus prevent the further transmission of your data by deselecting the respective service under “Miscellaneous services (optional)” in the settings later also accessible via the “Privacy Settings” in the footer of our website). For further information, please refer to Data Protection Declaration and the Google Privacy Policy. * Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland; parent company: Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
    ** Note: The data transfer to the USA associated with the data transmission to Google takes place on the basis of the European Commission’s adequacy decision of 10 July 2023 (EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework).

    Patience, endurance and precision work

    For stop motion films, countless pictures are taken to be then played in a sequence, similar to a flip book. For each frame, the object in front of the lens is always moved a little bit in real precision work. In the end, this results in fluid movements. Here the dough is being rolled out by a bulldozer. Since it was easier to move the model forwards through the dough, the shots were then played in reverse order. The recording for this picture took about 2.5 hours.
  • Strike a pose!
    The main difficulty is that the objects must always remain in position for a few seconds until the picture can be taken. There are all kinds of helpful tricks for this. For example, to enable the reachstacker to stay in this position, it was supported by a counterweight attached to a transparent fishing line. Double-sided adhesive tape was also often used to ensure that the models did not accidentally slip out of place.

    Strike a pose!

    The main difficulty is that the objects must always remain in position for a few seconds until the picture can be taken. There are all kinds of helpful tricks for this. For example, to enable the reachstacker to stay in this position, it was supported by a counterweight attached to a transparent fishing line. Double-sided adhesive tape was also often used to ensure that the models did not accidentally slip out of place.

  • Praise to the editor
    A so-called bluescreen, a technique for colour-based image cropping, was of further assistance. This technique makes it possible to subsequently edit elements into the images or even cut out necessary tools. For example, the magical winter landscape was created in the window, and supporting arms that held models or utensils in position were edited out later.

    Praise to the editor

    A so-called bluescreen, a technique for colour-based image cropping, was of further assistance. This technique makes it possible to subsequently edit elements into the images or even cut out necessary tools. For example, the magical winter landscape was created in the window, and supporting arms that held models or utensils in position were edited out later.

  • Real teamwork
    A four-member team spent seven days setting up and dismantling scene pictures, moving models millimetre by millimetre, relocating props and manually taking picture after picture. What was still quite insecure on day 1 quickly turned into a well-rehearsed routine. Sometimes eight models were moved at the same time, which demanded highest concentration, good nerves and a constantly steady hand. But the icing on the cake was the editing. To get the final results, the video was edited for a another further 14 days.

    Real teamwork

    A four-member team spent seven days setting up and dismantling scene pictures, moving models millimetre by millimetre, relocating props and manually taking picture after picture. What was still quite insecure on day 1 quickly turned into a well-rehearsed routine. Sometimes eight models were moved at the same time, which demanded highest concentration, good nerves and a constantly steady hand. But the icing on the cake was the editing. To get the final results, the video was edited for a another further 14 days.

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