Christmas wreath

Happy 1st Advent folks!

While my German friends enjoyed the first snow we are sweating at 35 degrees and the thought of
a candle wreath on the table wasn't that appealing to me.

Instead I made a flower power wreath inspired by the amazingly creative guys from prints charming.
I attended their workshop two weeks ago and managed to just finished my cardboard/paper flowers
just in time for the 1st Advent.

My finished paper flower wreath.

Cardboard of all sorts, hot glue gun, paint and twigs is all you need.

A bundle of twigs is getting recycled.

Start with laying out the twigs first and hot glue together.

Beautiful creations by prints charming using recycled cardboard packaging.

German Lebkuchen cookies - November Daring Bakers Challenge

Holiday season is the time for sharing and Peta of Peta Eats is sharing a dozen cookies, some classics and some of her own, from all over the world with us.

Oh, Peta gave us so many choices but I knew I had to make the German Lebkuchen (gingerbread) cookies. Lebkuchen is the ultimate Christmas memory to me and this recipe is beautiful soft and moist yet firm enough to cut out any shape you like. Perfect for Christmas baking with family and friends.

In Germany it's a beloved tradition to have friends over for some cookie baking (Plaetzchen) to devour them on the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve. Also important is the table decoration consisting of a wreath with four candles marking the four Advent Sundays. On the first Sunday you'll light only one candle and then the second on the second Advent and so fourth.

It's such a nice welcoming of Christmas that I miss very much here in Sydney. I still have candles on the table but since it's summer it doesn't quite feel the same to me.

Anyway, baking is still fun even in summer and these gingerbread cookies are very scrumptious. 

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Ingredients:
85ml honey
115g dark brown sugar
30g butter
225g plain flour, sifted
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 egg, beaten
50g ground almonds
Icing
25g icing sugar sifted
2 tsp water 


Method

In a large pan place the honey, sugar and butter. Put on a low heat until the butter and sugar have melted.  Remove from the heat. Sift together the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda. Beat the egg in a small dish. Add one half of the flour mixture and half of the egg to the pan and mix well. Repeat with the remaining flour and egg. Finally add in the ground almonds and mix till thoroughly combined. The dough now needs to be chilled, it is very sticky and will seem along way away from being a biscuit dough but don’t worry.

Place it in a plastic bag, an easy way of doing this is to fold a bag over the inside of a large jug and tip the dough in.
Chill overnight in the fridge, in fact you can leave this dough to develop it’s flavours in the fridge for up to three days.

Roll dough out between two sheets of greaseproof paper to approx 5mm thick. Preheat the oven to 160c Fan/180c/Gas Mark 4. Cut out shapes and lay them on a lined baking tray.

Bake in the oven for 7-9 minutes until golden brown.  Allow to cool for five minutes on the tray to firm up a little before carefully transferring to a cooling rack.

Mix up a runny icing glaze combining your sifted icing sugar with the water. Line up the lebkuchen on a wire rack. Using a pastry brush glaze the tops of the biscuits by brushing on a thin layer of icing.  Apply a second coat and leave to dry. The biscuits will keep for up to three weeks in an airtight container – that’s if you can resist eating them.

Lebkuchenwuerfel

Today I made gingerbread slices to give them as teacher's present for Christmas. They are really yummy and the hundreds and thousands make them quite playful which I thought kind of fits nicely for a pre school. You can of course also ganache them with dark chocolate which also works well.
Happy 3rd Advent to everyone!

For this typical German Lebkuchen (gingerbread) you'll need a spice mix that will give those slices their authentic taste. In Germany, around Christmas time you'll be able to buy ready made spice mixes for all sorts of different Lebkuchen and Pfefferkuchen but you might not get it in Australia. However it's easily mixed together with spices available here and I'll give you a link to a recipe for Lebkuchengewuerz.

Recipe:
100 g dark chocolate, melted
200 g butter, melted
200 g brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons red wine
100 g ground hazelnuts
200 g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons gingerbread spices*(see note)

Icing:
200 g pure icing sugar
6-8 tablespoons orange juice
 hundreds and thousands to sprinkle

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2.  Whisk together chocolate, butter, brown sugar and eggs.
3. Combine hazelnuts, flour, baking powder and spices and fold through the chocolate-butter mixture.
4. Line a deep baking tray (34x24 cm) with baking paper and spread dough evenly in tray.
5. Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until a skewer pokes in the centre comes out clean. Let cool.
6. Make icing and spread over slice then sprinkle with hundreds and thousands and let set.
7. Cut into squares.

*note;  "Lebkuchengewuerz" is called for in many German Christmas recipes.  It consist of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice, but also coriander and cardamom, which are not so common in in other spice mixes. If you do not have access to packets of "Lebkuchen Spice", you can make it at home, with this recipe.

Gingerbread house party

This past Sunday was the 3rd Advent and it rained and rained and rained. Quite unusual to have so much rain in Sydney at this time of the year but on the other hand the best weather for staying indoors and bake and make gingerbread houses. It's a beloved Christmas tradition in Germany to bake (well, if you're pressed for time you can buy them already made as a gingerbread house kit. I saw them at IKEA the other day.) and decorate the house with smaller Lebkuchen (gingerbread) and anything that you can think of. Years ago I bought a gingerbread house mould from Chefs Tool Box. The mould guarantees that all sides are even and makes assembling the house an easy task but you'll need a lot of royal icing to stick it all together. Don't make the icing too runny or it will take too long to set. I always stick sugar cubes inside the corners to make sure the walls are standing upright and prevent them from going lopsided. My daughter and her friends were adamant to decorate the houses themselves and the three of them got quickly very busy and sticky ;-). It was so much fun to watch them but I was also very much looking forward to a nice glass of wine in the evening. However, when the evening came the rain stopped, at least for a little while, and we got invited to join in to a pre-Christmas street fete. It was beautiful to share a merry moment with some lovely neighbours and everyone enjoyed themselves including the kids scooting up and down the pathway.

In Germany gingerbread (Lebkuchen) is made in two forms: a soft form used for cookies, slices and cake and a harder form, particularly associated with carnivals and street markets such as the Christmas markets (I really miss those markets) that occur in many German towns. The hard gingerbread is used for shapes, which are then further decorated with sweets and icing. The German-style Gingerbread is often used to build Lebkuchen Haeuser similar to the "witch's house" in the German fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. These houses are popular Christmas decorations everywhere in Germany and often built by children with the help of their parents.

This recipe makes one house and gives you a bit extra.

125 g brown sugar
a pinch salt
300 g treacle
1 tablespoon ground ginger
180 g butter, softened
500 g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
2. Beat sugar, salt and treacle, ginger and butter in a large mixer until combined and lighter in colour.
3. Add flour and bicarb soda and whisk until mixture forms a thick dough.
4. Place on lightly floured workbench and flatten with you hands. Press dough into mould.
5. Place mould on baking tray and bake for 20-30 minutes or until firm to touch (dough will crisp up once cooled).
6. Cool before removing from mould.


Use royal icing to assemble the house. I am sure your kids will love to help decorating the house with candies and Christmas cookies.

Easy as lemon-passionfruit curd

I am currently working in the Breville test kitchen and my colleague and test kitchen manager there, Naomi, brought in the latest copy of Janelle Bloom's My favourite food cookbook . I cannot go past a cookbook without at least trying one recipe and the microwave lemon curd in this one got me hooked.
At home, I realised I didn't have enough lemons to make a lemon curd so I mixed lemon and passion fruit juice for the curd. The method is so simple I will ever be thankful to Janelle for sharing it.

It's also a great last minute Christmas gift or as an Advent Mitbringsel (bring along gift). Just wrap the lid with a little linen, secure with a ribbon and add a nice gift tag - and off you go.

And here is my recipe for the lemon and passion fruit curd made in the microwave:

3 large eggs (please be kind and only buy free-range)
2 egg yolks
160 g caster sugar
rind of 1 lemon, finely grated (best to use a microplane)
100 ml lemon juice
60 ml fresh passion fruit juice, strained and seeds discarded (you'll need approx. 6-7 passion fruits)
125 g butter, diced

Whisk eggs, egg yolks, sugar and lemon rind in a large, heat-proof, microwave-safe bowl until combined. Whisk through lemon and passion fruit juice. Add the butter. Microwave, uncovered, for 7-10 minutes on Medium/50% whisking every minute until the mixture just comes to the boil and thickens. Pour into sterilised jars. Keep refrigerated.

You can use this curd for breakfast or as a filling for cookies or on top of a slice. It's always yummy!

Happy 1st Advent

Today is the first Advent and the start of a beloved Christmas tradition in Germany.
Advent are the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas, and to mark this passage of time, many Germans light a new candle on their Advent wreath every Advent Sunday.
Many families celebrate the Advent Sundays with singing Christmas carols, drinking hot spiced wine, and eating Christmas cookies or a piece of Stollen, a traditional German Christmas cake.
The Advent wreath was "invented" by Johann Hinrich Wichern, a German pastor, who founded an orphanage in Hamburg in 1833.  During the weeks leading up to Christmas, the children would ask him daily if Christmas had arrived. To make the wait easier, Wichern came up with his magical Christmas countdown, creating his first Advent wreath out of an old cartwheel and small candles.

Since living in Australia I need to mark this date in my calendar otherwise I would simply forget. It's 26 degrees Celsius outside and most of my friends are at the beach right now. Sounds weird for Christmas, doesn't it? Well, at least when you're from Europe.
Anyway, I  kicked off the Silly Season with some very traditional German Advent baking and my first batch of Plaetzchen (biscuits) are Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars).

I love Zimtsterne and you'll get them everywhere around this time in Germany.

And here is the recipe for true blue German Christmas cookies:

Zimsterne:

3 egg whites
250 g icing sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
1-2 teaspoons cinnamon
375 g ground almonds

1. Beat egg whites with an electric whisk until stiff peaks form. Fold through icing sugar, tablespoon after tablespoon until soft and glossy. Take aside 3 tablespoons of the meringue for later.
2. Add vanilla sugar, cinnamon and almonds and mix through until it all comes together and isn't sticky anymore.
3. Roll dough between two layers of baking paper with a rolling pin to 1cm thick. Rest in refrigerator for about 2 hours.
4. Preheat oven to 125 degree Celsius. Cut out stars using a cookie cutter and put on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Press cookie cutter in extra icing sugar if the dough sticks to the cutter.
5. Brush stars (or use a wooden skewer if you don't have a small brush) with meringue and bake for 15 min. Decrease oven temperature to 100 degree Celsius and bake for another 10-15 min. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.
6. Repeat with dough until all is used.

Light 1 candle (1st Advent) and enjoy with tea or mulled wine (Gluehwein).