Tada, today I’m introducing a specialty that actually comes from Spain and has been adapted in Latin America with local products: turrón. In Germany, we would probably call this nougat. Turrón traditionally consists of a honey-sugar syrup that is mixed with egg whites and almonds. This “paste” is then pressed into relatively flat bars and then cut into pieces or cubes. I use the version with peanuts (maní), which are much cheaper to buy in Uruguay and are also native to the country. The Uruguayans have simply replaced almonds with a local product: peanuts. Turrón basically comes in two varieties: “duro”, i.e. hard turrón, or “blando”, i.e. the softer verrsion. I opted for the hard version. You should definitely be prepared to take at least 45 minutes to make this delicacy and you will need some arm muscle. However, I think it’s well worth the effort.
Today I am going to introduce a festive orange sponge roll with cranberry filling. What I like best about this recipe? That you can make a lot of the components in advance. In fact you can make the entire roll the day before and only decorate it shortly before serving. This is perfect if you want to show something on Christmas, but don’t want to do everything on Christmas directly, stress-free recipes are the best, are you with me?
Today I have sustainable Christmas (tree) decorations for you. I decided to decorate my Christmas tree with cookies and dried orange slices. Yes, you read right, theoretically speaking all these decorations can be eaten. I don’t as I keep them for the following years for decorating. If you are considering decorating your tree with homemade cookies and orange slices, this blog post is for you. You may also make a wreath with the dried orange slices as pictured below. I have mentioned this before, but as a university student, I was too poor to buy expensive Christmas decorations, so I started decorating everything with gingerbread. Gingerbread houses, gingerbread advent wreath, tiny gingerbread houses for the mug, you name it, I was the gingerbread queen. I then slowly started making other cookie ornaments, for example, I used sugar cookies for my tree and I checked for some other ideas. The latest idea was to dry orange slices and put them on the tree. After a little bit of research, I finally arrived at the “recipe” below and I am happy to share it. I usually keep my cookies and the orange slices for the following year. As long as you don’t plan on eating them, you are good to go. Keep them cool and dry in a loose box. This works for me. I hope for you, too!
You may have had enough from cookies, but I don’t care, I decided to blog a last-minute recipe: German hazelnut crescents with five ingredients. This recipe was passed down to me by a lovely lady in Munich. Just as these Heidesand cookies and this Dresdner Eierschecke are recipes from readers, this one has a funny backstory. The German platform Nebenan.de works like a community platform, I got curious when I saw that somebody was asking whether German bakeries in the vicinity sold homemade cookies. I learned that his mother had requested homemade cookies during the season. Since she had recently moved to a nursery home, she couldn’t make them herself anymore. He didn’t dare to make some, so I inquired. One thing let to another and after all I managed to bake these crescents according to his mother’s recipe. Yes, of course she got a batch right away.
Every year I make a Christmas cookie plate with different cookies, usually with around 10+ cookies. I wanted to share my two plates with you for inspiration. How to ship cookies is explained in this blog article, another article looks at how to deal with sugar cookies. If you want to freeze egg whites, this article may be for you. So let’s start with the cookies I made in 2023 and 2022:
Today we are making vegan gingerbread hearts with jam filling. If you so desire, you can also make them vegan, you only need to swap out the butter for vegan butter as the dough naturally does not contain any eggs. You may find this gingerbread surprising as it contains jam and chocolate. I can assure you, this is a very German recipe. In fact, every year these gingerbread hearts are sold as of October. I always thought it was impossible to make them at home. But one time when I was eating a store-bought heart, I thought, let’s see how they are actually made and consulted the Internet. To my surprise they are much easier to make than originally thought. You make gingerbread dough (check), you cut out hearts with a cookie cutter, then you place a bit of jam on one heart and seal it with another heart on top. You bake them and dunk them in chocolate. That’s it!
Right before Christmas I wanted to share a sugar cookie with royal icing made to wreaths. I use these for our Christmas tree, but obviously you can also just eat them like this or give away as a gift. My Christmas tree ornaments always need to be homemade, at least most of them. I usually decorate my Christmas tree with gingerbread. As we have a dog now, we do have some “fake” gingerbread ornaments, mainly hanging at the bottom so that there is no danger. However, this year I decided to also decorate with the sugar cookies made as Christmas wreaths. Continue Reading…
The good thing when you get married to somebody from another country is that you can start your own traditions. I got married to a Colombian 12 years ago, but we have been living in Germany since the start. Christmas is traditionally something we have discussed extensively. I have explained the difference between Colombian and German Christmas in this blog post. Man, we have discussed so many things, should it be the traditional bird as is common in Germany or should we go for the many snacks Colombians like to serve for Christmas? Should we make tamales, which is corn, veggies and meat steamed in banana leaves and which require a lot of work? Should we focus on the gifts instead or spend hours on the food? One thing we have learned over the years is that what works best for us is to create new traditions. Traditions that are neither German nor Colombian, but just us. New traditions we like and enjoy.
Shame on me, somehow I never manage to take care of a proper Advent wreath on time. When I finally decide to buy one, they are always sold out or only very sad ones are left. I am talking about the traditional ones with candles and fir branches. But not this time. This time we will have an advent wreath made from gingerbread. I love making things from gingerbread. Years ago, when I was a poor university student, I started this tradition of making everything from gingerbread as I didn’t have money to buy any expensive Christmad decoration. I decorated the Christmas tree with gingerbread, the nativity was made from it, I even hung some igingerbread n the windows. It is definitely something I hold dear. So this year I decided to make the advent wreath from gingerbread as well.
Today I am introducing you to these amazing ginger cookies! They have three types of ginger in them, freshly grated ginger, ginger powder and candied ginger. I promise you, they do taste like ginger. I love their buttery flavor. The chocolate adds a nice contrast. If you are looking for some delicious cookies for the season, look no further, these ginger cookies are perfect for any cookies box.