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Just to let you know what we’re up to on this grey and rainy St. Nicholas-Day (posted the recipe last year already):
Nur um euch einen Blick auf das werfen zu lassen, was wir an diesem grauen und verregneten Nikolaustag so machen (letztes Jahr schon das Rezept veröffentlicht):
As I was NOT preparing for the market, I cooked quince jelly (-jam, -marmalade, -…?). I got some quince from my mother-in-laws neighbour, kept it for a while because I like the smell and had even less time to cook, borrowed a steam-juicer from my husband’s colleague and finally made it, just cooking the juice and a good amount of jelling sugar:
Then I printed some nice freebie-labels from eatdrinkchic and voilá: the finished loot:
Da ich mich ja mitunter NICHT für den Markt vorbereitet habe, habe ich unter anderem Quittengelee gekocht. Von Schwiegermamas Nachbarin kamen die Quitten, die lagen eine Weile so rum weil ich den Duft mag und noch weniger Zeit zum einkochen hatte, der Dampf-Entsafter wurde geliehen von einer Kollegin meines Gatten und dann war’s soweit: der Saft mit genügend Gelierzucker zusammengekocht, gratis-Etiketten von eatdrinkchic ausgedruckt und voilá: die fertige Beute.
In my kitchen was a glass full of lavender, standing next to the teas. I bought that organic lavender because I like the smell and simply couldn’t resist buying it, with no particular idea of what to do with it. So I poured it into a weck-glass and there it was, next to the teas and from time to time I thought I should do something with it before its getting faded. And then, some weeks ago, it hit me: make tea-bags with lavender! So I disassembled a bag, drank the Earl Grey, made some sort of pattern and started cutting and filling: 
It was fun and now I have some lovely-smelling tags for sale and for my Christmas-presents:
And I also very much like the tin-box!
In unserer Küche stand ein Glas mit Lavendel neben den Tee-Packungen. Ich habe den mal gekauft, weil ich einfach den Geruch mag und dem Kauf nicht wiederstehen konnte, ohne genaue Idee was damit zu tun sei. Also ab in’s Glas und neben den Tee, und von Zeit zu Zeit dachte ich, dass ich ja mal was damit machen solle bevor er blass und fade wird. Und dann, vor ein paar Wochen, kam’s mir: Lavendelsäckchen-Teebeutel! Also Earl-Grey-Beutel aufgeschnippelt, ‘ne Art Schnittmuster gebastelt, den Tee getrunken, zugeschnitten und mit dem Lavendel gefüllt. Hat Spaß gemacht und nun habe ich wohlriechende Geschenkanhänger für den Shop und für mich. Und die Dose mag ich auch sehr!
A view of our current dining-table-decoration: Some leaves are collected outside, some leaves are baken. An edible decoration is always very tempting….
Ein aktueller Blick auf unseren Esstisch: einige Blätter sind draußen gefunden, einige sind gebacken. Essbare Deko ist immer eine Versuchung…
The recipe (basically simple butter-cookies):
200 g flour, 50 g wheat bran, 125 g sugar (I mix white and brown), vanilla sugar to taste, 1 egg, 150 g cold butter, 1 pck candied ginger, fresh ginger
Chop the candied ginger into little pieces, grate the fresh ginger. Mix everything but don’t overmix, let cool in fridge for about 1 hour, roll out and cut cookies, bake at ~175°C for 10 – 12 minutes. Enjoy!
Das Rezept (im Grunde einfache Butterplätzchen):
200 g Mehl, 50 g Weizenkleie, 125 g Zucker (ich mische weiß und braun), Vanillezucker, 1 Ei, 150 g kalte Butter, 1 Pckg kandierten Ingwer, frischer Ingwer
Den kandierten Ingwer in kleine Stücke hacken, den frischen Ingwer reiben. Dann alles mischen, aber nicht zu sehr, im Kühlschrank für ca. 1 Stunde ruhen lassen und ausrollen und ausstechen. Bei ~175°C für 10 – 12 Minuten backen. Genießen!
I wish you all a wonderful Christmas-time, good company, good food, lots of laughter and time to relax. And a well-decorated home ;-))
If you want a matching table-decoration or if you are in need of a nice little present (and still have 15 mins. sewing-time), here’s my first ever tutorial:
How to make a tealight-cozy
Cut two squares of fabric, edge length appr. 15 cm (6 inch), and pin right sides together:
Sew along edges, leave a gap for turning in the middle of one side, clip corners:
Now turn and press:
Choose which side you want to be the in- and outside, the later inside is what you see here. Fold your square halfways, mark the middle of the short sides with pins and sew from about 1 cm (1/2 inch) off the folded side towards the pins (take a close look at the photo, then you know what I mean):
Now fold the remaining two sides halfways (sort of), pin and sew:
You end up with something like this:
Time to switch off your machine, you’re almost finished. Just turn,
and fix the corners with a few stitches (or glue, if you’re really in a hurry), like this:
To elevate the tealight, fill in inflammable fake snow or glass-pebbles, even sand will do:
Add the tealight and tadaaa! it’s finished and nice on your table, window-sill or wherever you want to have a little tealight-candle:
Today I finally came ’round to start making Springerle, a kind of bisquit which is hard to chew but nice to smell and to look at. It’s part of our families’ holiday tradition, and, as I’m taking part in the Christmas holiday traditions exchange, I translated the recipe into English:
Springerle – Recipe
2 eggs
200 gr. confectioners sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
250 gr. flour
1 pinch of baking powder
aniseed
Beat eggs and sugars until creamy, then carefully add flour and baking-powder. Roll out dough about 1 cm thick, dust generously with flour and press mould onto the dough, cut into pieces. Sprinkle baking-plate with aniseed and let the springerle-pieces dry on it for 24 hours. Then bake ~ 30 min. at 150 – 160°C.
These Springerle are made by my Dad every year, we use them more as a decoration than as real sweets because they are so hard to bite, but they last long and smell and look nice. I think they’re only edible dipped into coffee, like Italian cantuccini. We have several moulds in our family, some are from my Grandma, who came from the Black Forest, some are presents of friends who know that we actually bake Springerle and some are bought at fleemarkets, because nowadays these moulds are hard to get, I think the best option is in Black Forest Souvenir-Shops.
✴✴✴ Gingerbread-House ✴✴✴
250 gr. honey
100 gr. sugar
1 egg
50 gr. butter
100 gr. ground hazelnut
350 gr. flour
½ sachet potassium carbonate
mix ground spices, like cinnamon, nutmeg, orange-peel, cardamom, anisseed, clove and dark chocolate-powder
several egg-whites and confectioners sugar as ‚mortar’, sweets for decoration
Heat honey, sugar and butter in a pan until melted, add spices. Mix flour with nuts in a bowl, add an egg and the honey-sugar-butter-spices-mix and the potassium dissolved in a tablespoon of water. Mix and let stand for at least a night.
Roll out the dough to 0,5 – 1 cm and cut out a front and a back part, two sides and two roof parts, using the templates and a knife. Also cut out doors and windows as you like, probably some trees and other things you want to add to the scenery.
Bake for 12 to 15 mins. at 175°C. Let cool completely, so it hardens.
Now it’s time to make ‚mortar’, beating egg-whites and sugar until it’s stiff and spoon the icing into a small plastic-bag where you cut off an edge. I always use toyblocks to stabilize the gingerbread-walls while trying to ‚glue’ the house with the icing. And experience showed it’s wise to let the icing-mortar between the walls dry before you try and set up the roof, otherwise everything slowly glides and falls apart, the tension on the walls is too much.
After letting the construction dry comes the fun part: decorate the house with sweets, glued onto walls and roof with icing. It’s always amazing how many sweets per square decimeter are possible.
The other fun part is destruction-time: After Chrismas the kids are allowed to loot the house, the bits of gingerbread left for the adults can be softened in a tin with an appleslice or made into a crumble, if not too dusty ;-))
I have to make a gingerbread-house every year, my son insists on it, though he only really likes the fun parts. Baking is so la-la, constructing might be interesting, but frankly, children are of no help then, it’s a bit like building a house of cards. Usually it’s a weekend-project, Friday preparing the dough, Saturday baking, Sunday morning its construction-time and Sunday afternoon its time to decorate. I think because it’s quite a lot of work, my Mum only made it twice (she is not too crazy about baking anyway) and lots of people buy prebaked houses which only have to be decorated. I used to work in a youth center, there they had a giant house made of wood, which was only decorated with sweets and looted at the Christmas party as a game, then cleaned and re-used the next year.
The templates are self-made after the shape of the typical medieval houses here in Northern Germany, in our family we call them ‚Lübeck-houses’, after the city my husband comes from. And you can add a light inside the house to shine out of the windows, I use a battery-powered bicycle light.
As promised last night, I’m sitting at the laptop now and went through the photo-archive. I couldn’t find a pic of last year’s gingerbread-house, but of that two years ago. Elaborate. And you can catch a glimpse of my families holiday-traditions: having a kind of ‘landscape’ under the tree.
Wie letzte Nacht versprochen, sitze ich nun am Laptop und bin das Foto-Archiv durchgegangen. Ich konnte leider kein Bild vom Lebkuchenhaus vom letzten Jahr finden, aber das von dem vor zwei Jahren. Kunstvoll. Und man kann einen Blick auf eine der familieneigenen Weihnachtstraditionen erhaschen: eine Art ‘Landschaft’ unter dem Baum.
Hi! Have you been missing me? Well, I’m still alive and a ‘real’ adult now (as Ute told me), I turned forty last Saturday. Besides, there were some other birthday-parties around here, a Christmas-market and a real Christmas-rush on DaWanda, the usual frenzy at work and my personal pre-holiday-frenzy as well. Now that all birthday-parties are survived and its only two days until Christmas-holidays, I slowly relax, keep a promise to Shannon ;-) and start writing again. Sort of. I start with pictures:
Well, after ‘building’ the gingerbread-house desaster struck and everything collapsed. But: we could save the different parts, only smeared with icing-glue. So we assembled the house again and went on. That’s the first time this happened to us. Tomorrow I’ll show you last year’s house, the photo’s on the laptop. And then it’s time for the recipe, promised.
Hi! Habt ihr mich vermisst? Nun denn, ich lebe noch und bin jetzt ‘richtig’ erwachsen (wie mir Ute mitteilte), ich wurde letzten Samstag vierzig. Nebenbei waren hier noch so einige andere Geburtstagsfeiern, ein Weihnachtsmarkt und viele Weihnachtsverkäufe bei DaWanda, der übliche Wahnsinn bei der Arbeit so wie mein persönlicher Vorweihnachtswahn. Jetzt, wo alle Geburtstagsfeiern überstanden sind und es nur noch zwei Tage bis zu den Weihnachtsferien sind, kann ich mich so langsam entspannen, ein Versprechen an Shannon halten ;-) und wieder schreiben. Oder so. Ich fange mit Bildern an.
Mmh, nach dem ersten Zusammenbau nahm die Katastrophe ihren Lauf und das Lebkuchenhaus fiel in sich zusammen. Aber: wir konnten die Bauteile retten, nur etwas Zuckerschnee-verschmiert. Also setzten wir das Haus wieder zusammen und machten weiter. Das passierte uns zum ersten Mal. Morgen werde ich das letztjährige Haus zeigen, das Foto ist auf dem Laptop. Und dann wird’s Zeit für’s Rezept, versprochen!
Due to a laryngitis I’m at home, I can hardly speak (bad for job), but I can run around (good for home), so I spent this morning making some of my favourite cookies: Cantuccini or Biscotti di Prato. I think it’s the same, they taste and look like Italian Cantuccini bought at a gourmet-shop, but in the old-school Italian Cookbook (late 70s?) I got the recipe from they’re called Biscotti di Prato, Italians and Foodies out there correct me, please. This is how I make them:
I roast 200gr blanched almonds in a pan. Then I beat 3 egg-whites with a pinch of salt and set it aside. The egg-yolks are beaten up with 250 gr sugar, I replace about a third with light brown sugar and I use quite a lot of vanilla-sugar, too. Then I add the ground skin of a lemon and the almonds. Slowly and carefully I mix in the beaten egg-whites and afterwards 400 gr. flour and about a teaspoon of baking-powder. I preheat the oven to appr. 175°C. The dough has to be rolled into two baguette-like stick-thingies (that’s the only difficult part, because there are always almonds falling off) and comes into the oven for about 30 – 45 minutes. I usually forget to look at the watch but look how the sticklike thingies look like (lots of look in one sentence…). After getting them out of the oven I immediately cut them into pieces (later it’s impossible, too hard to cut) and enjoy the smell in my kitchen…:-))
Aufgrund einer Stimmbandentzündung bin ich zu Hause, ich kann kaum sprechen (schlecht für’n Job) aber herumlaufen (gut für Zuhause), also habe ich diesen Morgen einige meiner Lieblingskekse gebacken: Cantuccini oder Biscotti di Prato. I glaube, dass es dasselbe ist, sie schmecken und sehen aus wie Cantuccini aus dem Feinkostladen, aber in dem altmodischen Italienischen Kochbuch (Spät-70-er?) aus dem das Rezept stammt werden sie Biscotti di Prato genannt, Italiener und Essexperten korrigiert mich bitte. So mache ich sie:
Ich röste 200 gr blanchierte Mandeln in der Pfanne. Dann schlage ich 3 Eiweiß mit einer Prise Salz auf und stell’s erstmal zur Seite. Die 3 Eigelb werden mit 250 gr Zucker verrührt, ich ersetze einen Teil mit braunem Zucker und benutze viel Vanillezucker. Danach reibe ich die Schale von einer Zitrone und füge sie mit den Mandeln der Masse zu. Langsam und vorsichtig mische ich nun das steife Eiweiß darunter und rühre dann auch noch 400 gr Mehl und ca. 1 Teelöffel Backpulver darein. Der Ofen wird auf ca. 175 °C vorgeheizt. Jetzt rolle ich den Teig in zwei Baguette-artige Teigrollen (der schwierigste Teil, weil immer Mandeln rausfallen) die für 30 – 45 Minuten gebacken werden. Ich vergesse leider meist nach der Uhr zu sehen, deshalb gehe ich nach Bräunungsgrad und Dicke… Gleich nachdem ich die Rollen aus dem Ofen hole schneide ich sie in Stücke (später ist’s unmöglich, zu hart zum schneiden) und genieße den Duft in meiner Küche…:-))
