Christmas Workshop I

It is a countdown to Christmas Day. This is the most pleasant stress I have been put through - so many plans and projects, so little time to do them. Every year around Christmas, I feel trapped in my own fear that the time is not enough to accomplish everything. And this is only because I want to do all - I put in my "ToDoList" everything I like. But than I realize that one life is not enough to plan, work and finish all I want for Christmas.



Snow came earlier than anticipated this year. Even though I still have this bugging feeling of being behind the schedule.

I started a project that I will need for a Christmas Party. It will be full of kids - not even sure how much more than a hundred would they be. At first I wanted to do monogrammed snowflakes, but as soon as I realized they will be so many, I decided to make something else:


Petit pains d'épice / Gingerbread biscuits


170 g unsalted butter
170 g shortening
250 g brown sugar
2 large eggs
340 g molasses


750 g flour
5 g baking soda

4 g salt
5 g ginger
2 g cinnamon
1 g ground cloves

In a bowl, measure the flour, adding the spices. Set the bowl with the dry ingredients a side. Beat the butter and the shortening together, until creamy. Add the sugar and beat at medium high speed until combined. Add eggs one by one, beating after each addition until well incorporated. Beat in the molasses. Set the mixer at low speed and start adding the dry ingredients in portions.  If the lowest speed of your mixer is still higher than stirring, you better stir in the dry ingredients by hand using a spatula. Wrap the batter in cling foil and leave in the refrigerator to chill for an hour. 

I used the rolling method - thinning the dough to 6 mm. For the purpose of this project, I rolled the dough in a rectangle. Then graphed it into 4 cm squares, baked the whole rectangle at 190C. After the baking, I immediately cut the squares again to separate them, while they are hot, and left them cooling on the pan.

I need my whole rectangle - this is my canvas. I used a large wooden board, glued each square one by one to it with royal icing, trying not to loose the shape. During baking all the squares became oddly shaped quadrilaterals. If I do not transfer them to the board one after another , I will loose the rectangular shape of my canvas. It is still not perfect, of course, but my puzzle pieces have to match at least a bit.


Kneed a piece of sugar paste, roll and cut in smaller than 4 cm squares. I cut 3,5 cm squares from the sugar paste. Cover each of the petit biscuits with the pieces of the sugar paste. Because they are smaller, but perfect squares, and our biscuits are somehow differently shaped, with a small rolling pin, roll over the covered biscuits until you spread the sugar paste to the desired shape of the biscuits. This works in two ways - allows us to shape the sugar paste to the biscuit shape and also, nicely glues the paste.

Cover the whole rectangle. I did not strive so much for perfection. I wanted to achieve a nice working surface, but also wanted to have the look of a rough puzzle pieces.


This is my canvas. I have an idea what I want to achieve but I have no clue how this will turn out to look like. In any case, I need to wait an overnight for the sugar paste to dry out, so I will breath for now and plan the other things for Christmas.

Until tomorrow ... with hope that this might look the way I imagine it.

....

Three days later ... the result.


It looks as if my girls did the picture and I wish they had done it. I love the winter!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lebkuchen Houses

Image
Traditions are sculpted by the memories of the people. For some traditions is particularly easy to cross time and geographical borders, because of the taste. The well known gingerbread houses today are the young ancestors of the lebkuchen houses, born in Germany two hundred years ago, when Brothers Grimm wrote "Hansel and Gretel". German bakers were inspired by the descriptive story and freed their imagination into baking differently shaped and coloured small and big delicious houses.  Decorated with candies, small cookies, chocolate pieces and lots of icing, the houses are extremely appealing not only because of their whimsical appearance, but because of the heavenly aroma of the spices as well. Make this in advance and you will have Christmas feeling all season long.  I chose to bake lebkuchen houses because of the variety of spices used in the recipe . My houses are gently decorated with white royal icing and I did not use any candies. I like this way of decor
Read more

Rustico Buttergipfel

Image
55 g unsalted butter I 225 g unsalted butter II 30 g flour 15 g cold water 7 g dry yeast 20 ml lukewarm water 160 ml col water 14 g malt syrup , or 30 g dark honey 12 g salt 1 large egg 380 g flour My Grandma used to "toast" the butter for almost every pastry - either at the time of preparing or just before serving. It gave just a small "intonation" of difference to the colour but such a complete finish to the taste. At the time I did not care what and why she did that - to me it was just an extra unnecessary work. Later on at the university I realized how the separation works and what a difference it makes to the taste. French call it beurre noisette and use it mostly for pastry and savoury hot sauces, Indians call it ghee and cook mainly with it, in Germany and in the German part of Switzerland, chefs use this "toasty" butter for the buttergipfels .  The process is a simple separation into butterfat and milk solids, called clarificat
Read more

Old-fashioned Lebkuchen Stars and Hearts

Image
This is the classic recipe for Christmas Cookies from old Germany, or Switzerland (if you'd prefer). A recipe, I was hoping to find for a long time. Thanks to Sara Kelly Iaia and her fine memories, collected in the book "Festive Baking", I am happy to bake the first cookies for this Christmas. The honey and the quantity of the fragrant spices make these cookies unique. I would advise not to skip any of the spices or to change their quantity. I am pretty conservative when it comes to perfumed spices. I think the simpler ingredients make one dish tastier. But here, the spices are in perfect unison.   for the cookies: 490 g all purpose flour 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp baking powder 1 Tbsp cinnamon 1 tsp cardamom 1/2 tsp ground cloves 1/2 tsp powdered anise 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg 1/2 tsp ginger 225 g honey 160 g light brown sugar 134 g unsalted butter 1 large egg 1. Sift the flour in a bowl. 2. In another bowl, sift all
Read more