Christmas Biscuits

Because I am me, I spent most of my time in Europe last year eating seasonal food and buying trucs for the kitchen.  Among my favourite purchases were an assortment of biscuit moulds and cutters, perfect for Christmas.

In Brussels I developed a taste for the gingerbread biscuits known as Speculoos (or Speculaas), usually recognisable by their windmill shape, but at Christmas taking the form of Saint Nicholas for the December 6 feast day of Sinterklaas.

Speculoos-flavoured goodies are also a big deal in Belgium; you can get speculoos spread (kinda like peanut paste, but biscuity), speculoos macarons, and speculoos chocolates (Belgian chocolate with a creamy gingerbread filling).  Knowing I would be in withdrawal before too long, I purchased some ready-made spice mix and some traditional moulds, as well as a nifty kit to make miniature gingerbread houses.

Because I have followed their speculoos recipe exactly, I won't plagiarise Weekendbakery.com, rather, here is a link to their website:

http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/quest-for-the-best-speculaas/

Petites Maisons au Speculoos

 

I have hitherto only tried to make gingerbread houses once in my life, and that was as an inexperienced teenage cook with my friends Rachel and Marcella. A combination of the impatience of youth, having no idea what we were doing, and a subconscious nineties bias for postmodernist deconstruction meant that we never actually got the houses upright, but we ate them anyway, and probably remember the day a lot more fondly as a result.

I don't know if it was the result of the more forgiving physics of the smaller model, or of my new-found baking prowess, but this time around, I had a lot more success.

I used my special cookie cutters and speculoos dough.

I glued the pieces together with a basic royal icing.

Serve perched on the side of a mug.

Springerle

 

These highly ornamental biscuits originate in Germany, and what really makes them special is the artistry of the carved moulds that make the decorative pattern on the surface. Being unavailable for purchase here, I picked some moulds up at the Christkindlmarkt in Munich last year, but assuming you don't have any yourself, you could improvise with other shallow moulds (such as chocolate or fondant moulds) or look at your local craft store for a textured surface of some kind (I was thinking an embossing instrument or something). The recipe I used came from Peggy Porschen's Boutique Baking and although mine came out more burnished than the pale ones in the book, they looked and tasted fine.

Christmas Chutney

I wasn't going to give a recipe for chutney. Countless recipes are but a google search away, and, failing that, the British celebrity chefs have the market pretty well covered.  So I thought I'd simply follow the Christmas Chutney recipe from Nigella Christmas and have done with it.  But my plans came unstuck when I tried to source the 500g frozen cranberries that the recipe calls for.  I know frozen cranberries exist, I'm sure I have seen them in the supermarket before, but do you think I could locate any when I needed them? Having already mentally committed to the chutney recipe, I have made the necessary adjustments to cater for the substitution of dried cranberries.

 Ingredients

Approx 1kg Granny Smith apples, peeled and cored (to yield 750g apple), chopped into a 1cm dice
250 g dried cranberries
250 g pitted dates, quartered
1 onion, chopped
zest and juice of 1 orange
300g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
500ml white wine vinegar

Method

Put all the ingredients into a large pot, stir, and put over a medium heat. Let reach a boil, turn down, and simmer for about an hour. You may need to add a dash of water from time to time to keep it from getting too jammy.

While you wait for your chutney to simmer down to a soft pulp, sterilise your jars.  Preheat your oven to 140 degrees centigrade.  Wash your jars in very hot, soapy water, and rinse under the hot tap. Put your jars in the oven until dry. Do not touch the insides of your jars or lids at any stage as this would undo all your sterilisation efforts. The jars should still be warm when you put the chutney in to prevent the glass from cracking.    

The resulting chutney is rich and sweet, with a balancing hit of vinegar.  It goes magnificently with a cheese board, especially when there is blue cheese involved, and complements cold meats, particularly turkey, which is just as well really.

Turkey Salad with Nuts and Cranberries

When she talks Christmas, Nigella always gives excellent ideas for what to do with leftovers, and an Italian-inspired Insalata di Tracchino is one such recipe.  Ever mindful of visual appeal, and with a developed palate for bitterness, Nigella advocates the use of radicchio as the basis for her salad, but as much as I want to be sophisticated enough to eat this most decorative of leaf, the bitterness is simply too much for me (incidentally, I feel the same way about Campari and Aperol).

As I am adamant on providing a turkey salad as part of my light Christmas dinner spread, I have persevered and come up with my own version using mixed salad leaves and including dried cranberries (cranberries and turkey: of course!) and toasted almond flakes.   I've deliberately left the quantity of meat vague, so you can simply add what you have left over, and in any case, it's pretty easy to expand this salad to fit however big your guest list is.  When not cooking for Christmas, roast chicken, smoked chicken and smoked turkey work nicely here too.  This may be hubris, but I think my recipe outdoes the original.

Serves 4- 6 as part of a smorgasboard, or 2 as a main meal.


Ingredients

Cooked turkey meat, shredded (left over from lunch)
1 bag mixed salad leaves
4 tbsp dried cranberries
3 tbsp pine nuts, toasted on a dry frypan until fragrant and slightly burnished.
3 tbsp flaked almonds, toasted as above.
6 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
big handful fresh parsley, roughly chopped
salt and pepper.

Method

Make the dressing: put the olive oil, lemon juice and seasoning into a small jar with a lid. Close and shake. Put the lettuce in a mixing bowl, pour over approximately 2/3 of the dressing and toss to coat. Arrange the lettuce artistically on a large platter or salad bowl then top with the turkey meat. Scatter the parsley, cranberries, pinenuts and almonds, then drizzle over the remainder of the dressing.

Variation: to bulk this out to be a main meal, I often add additional salad vegetables like diced tomato, cucumber and avocado.

Salted Caramel Brandy Cream Liqueur

For Libby and Matt

One night when we were being terribly grown up and posh, we went to a little wine bar in the city with friends and were introduced to a liqueur called Creme au Caramel et a la Fleur de Sel, which tasted like the love child of liquidised salted caramel and Bailey's Irish Cream.  Needless to say, I had to give it a crack myself.

Ingredients

300ml brandy
1 tin dulce de leche (nestle "Top 'n Fill Caramel")
400ml single cream
4 tsp chocolate sauce
1 tsp almond essence
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp coffee powder
2 tbsp castor sugar
2 tsp caramel flavouring
pinch of salt


Method

Whisk together the caramel and cream then add all the flavourings, whisking after each addition.  Gradually stir in the brandy. 

Taste the mixture, and add more of any ingredient to adjust to your personal preference. For my part, I will probably dilute the mixture slightly with a bit more cream so that I can enjoy it served on its own.  Others may feel it needs a bit more of a brandy kick, or a stronger salt hit.  In any case, I'm confident you'll love this.