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we're off to anzére in the french part of switzerland for some sun and snow, sledding and maybe a spot of skiing and snowboarding. enjoy yr holidays, everyone!! be sure to enjoy time with yr family and loved ones, as well as eating, drinking, and generally being merry. see you in a week's time or so.
frohe weihnachten!
merry christmas!
at the moment i am really enjoying the bbc's food website. it has so much useful information regarding nutrition and diet, as well as an amazing treasure trove of recipes from all those fancy pants celebrity chefs. plus, it has a nifty recipe binder feature.
after reading through some of the vegetarian pages i've been inspired to make a lentil and tomato soup for dinner tonight. i'm a bit over meat. maybe that will be my new year's resolution - eat less meat. i was a vegetarian for 7 years until i had max, and then i found i craved red meat, probably to replenish the iron reserves so depleted by pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. i've eaten meat since then, and more so since we moved to switzerland where meat alternatives (fish, seafood, various tofu products) aren't so easily available. so, less meat, more pulses, grains and nuts!!!!!
y'know, i do cook and eat things other than cakes and sweeties, really i do. it's just that it's that (cake and biscuit) time of year, and baking something is absolutely so much easier than facing desperate hordes of shoppers. and anyway, lately i've been cooking a lot of rather unexciting nursery food, and/or other food which doesn't photograph well (i have a poached chicken in mind that i must tell you about sometime).
besides all that, i just like cakes : )
today i realised in a flash of panic that i hadn't bought a gift for the staff at max's chinderhuus. eeek! i simply CANNOT be so rude as to not give them something. they do a great job and max really loves going there. so tonight i made a batch of smartie cakes (chocolate cupcakes with smarties) for the kiddies and a batch of brownies for the adults. max helped me ice and adorn the cupcakes with smarties, carefully placing one in each centre. he did a very good job, although he did get a little over-enthusiastic licking the spoon. and i saw him sneak a couple of cupcakes - i made the super-tiny little ones (36!!), not normal cupcake size, because kids are only interested in the icing and the lollies anyway, so why waste cake?? - but then, isn't that just the best part of helping mummy bake cakes???
sorry, no photo of the brownies as they all turned out blurry (the photos, not the brownies). just a big blurry mound of brown with white (icing sugar) dust. suffice to say, they were warm, squidgy, and chocolatey.
i made the above yesterday - a chocolate and hazelnut tart, via an old autumn donna hay magazine. it was very good, and crucially, easy peasy. it has a crispy hazelnut base, and a dark, rich, moist filling - when we ate it last night it was still warm, so of course it was just that little bit extra divine. the puddle of goo on the top in the picture is gorgeous double cream (doppelrahm) from gruyere, just the right sort of cool blanketing richness you need to cut the darkness of the tart.
this recipe makes one bloody huge tart - donna's recipe uses a 26cm tart tin but i used a 30 cm one and it still filled it out nicely (and with leftover pastry to boot). we had it for dessert last night, i gave a huge wedge to bruno's parents and ate some more of it myself tonight and there is STILL at least a third left. yikes! the neighbours may get a surprise package on their doorstep tomorrow. my only quibble is that the pastry base was perhaps a little too floury and bland. the recipe uses 2 cups of flour and 3/4 cup of hazelnut meal but next time i would change that ratio. more meal, less flour. and a pinch of salt for taste. despite substituting lemon juice for the iced water, it still was pretty bland. however, it did crisp up beautifully. since serving a practically raw lemon tart a few weeks ago to visiting friends i am now totally paranoid about crispy pastry bases. the secret: cook on a baking tray at the bottom of the oven for a while then move higher up to finish off the top. the baking tray (directly above the heat source)holds a fiercer heat to cook the pastry nice n crisp.
saturday morning is always such a frenetic rush in the kitschenette household. there are shopping lists to be written (entailing at least partial planning of the up-coming week's meals), recycling to be sorted (glass - green, brown, white, tins, PET bottles, plastic milk bottles...they all need to go to different places) and dropped off, and afore-mentioned shopping to be done. by the time i get back home it's practically almost lunch-time, and i'm starving, the kids are starving and bruno, well he always seems to be hungry : )
most weeks we just throw together a kitchen sink lunch ie. bread, cheese, avocado, yoghurt etc etc but today was so cold that i really felt like something warm and comforting. i'd bought some ready-made pastry when i was shopping so i had the brilliant idea of making little pies for lunch. so quick, and easy (always my main criteria), and with the added bonus of little kiddies adoring them.
so simple! i used a large mug to cut out pastry rounds, and lined a muffin tray with the rounds. i had some left-over tomatoey chicken casserole, so i used that to fill some of them. i grated an apple and used that to make a quick apple pie, sprinkled with brown sugar. then i used a drinking glass (importantly, smaller than the rounds made by the mug) to cut out rounds for the top. i then wet the edges of the pastry casing and laid on the top, pressing the edges closed with a fork. a brush of egg yolk, and into the bottom of the oven on a baking tray (to crisp the bottoms) at 200°c for 15- 20 mins or so, until golden brown and delicious (you can move the pies up higher in the oven to brown the tops after 10 mins or so).
i made these mostly for the kiddies, but adults seem to find them irresistible, too. so keep an eye out for marauding adults if you leave them prone on the kitchen bench, wafting off their gorgeous smell.
i'm all biscuit-ed out. someone give me some cake!!!! anyway, here are the recipes for chräbeli (aniseed biscuits) and basler brunsli (chocolate almond biscuits). enjoy, escpecially you, ines!!!
it's observer food monthly time again, hooray!
reading nigel slater's article on christmas recipes, i was gratified to note that he reckons it's ok to chuck in any kind of dried fruit - figs, cranberries and apricots - ie. exactly what i put into mine - into a fruit cake, not just currants, raisins and sultanas. even though i know my cake turned out yummy and good, it's still nice to have 'expert' approval. i do like his inclusion of ground almonds and whole hazelnuts, though. that could be very good. in fact, i may just try out his recipe soon. y'know how i was ranting about all the excess christmas cake i had? well, after a few calculations and a careful think, i think i don't have ENOUGH cake! arrgh. i know i don't have to give out cake to all and sundry, but, well, i like to. and i'm tempted by nige's recipe, i must admit. so i may be triple-lining, muscle-mixing and waiting up til midnight again sometime later this week. i really am a glutton for punishment (secretly, i just like to eat cake : ) ).
back to biscuits: here is the recipe for mailänderli (chräbeli to come tomorrow - too convoluted to write up now!). after i posted last night i flicked through The Book and found some more guetzle i'd like to make, namely zimtsterne (cinnamon stars). however, bruno has just walked past and told me that actually, zimtsterne are bloody hard to make and the only people who attempt to make them are non-swissies who don't know better. hrrmph. well, ok. off to migros for some ready-made zimtsterne dough, then (yes, they do have ready-made dough, but only the most sacrilegious non-swissies would dare to use it). and btw, isn't zimtsterne such a cool word? (and yes, i know it's a snowboard clothing company as well).
the red kitchen has been a veritable hive of activity over the last few days. even as i type, the oven is getting ready for my second batch of biscotti, and a tray (the third!!) of aniseed chräbeli are cooling on the balcony. all this biscuity goodness is because biscuits are the order of the day, around here at this time of the year. the swiss go bonkers over biccies at christmas. i used to think it strange when we lived i oz that bruno would go so crazy over biscuits, but having been here for 3 christmases now, i totally understand. you can't look anywhere without seeing a stall full of guetzle (biscuits). people generally make (themselves! from scratch!) a few different types of biscuits then bundle them up in little cellophane bags with ribbons and give them to friends at christmas (weihnacht) time. how civilised! on the bus on the way home today a woman was telling me how her mother makes 16!!!! different types of guetzle every year. that's amazing. i'd love a cellophane bag of goodies from her.
at our house we are much more restrained. the most we can manage is maybe 3 or 4 different types. last year we made mailänderli (a basic kind of butter biscuit, sweetly flavoured with lemon zest and kirsch, in all kinds of shapes), chräbeli (aniseed and kirsch flavour, shaped into a kind of 'claw' - these are bruno's absolute favourite, hence the three trays), and not-very-traditionally-swiss-but-still-yummy almond biscotti. this year we will do the same, except we've upped the quotient of kirsch in both mailänderli and chräbeli for extra oomph, added orange zest as well as lemon zest in the mailänderli, doubled the amount of biscotti made, and perhaps will make some lebkuchen (gingerbread). oh, and maybe some spitzbuebe (2 mailänderli biscuits sandwiched together with jam), too, if we have the time (not to mention patience).
making guetzles is a fun thing to do with kiddies, too, as long as you don't expect them to stick with it for the whole marathon making/baking session. on sunday morning when bruno was making the mailänderli and chräbeli max was happy to help with the mixing but soon got tired of the stamping and brushing with egg yolk. so we staggered the steps of the whole process and he got to help with all the fun bits without getting too bored. the best bit, of course, was eating warm buttery mailänderli straight from the oven. mmmm! lola has also uncovered her inner-biscuit lover, as i found when i discovered her hunched over the biscuit tin that she had somehow managed to pull onto the floor, stuffing as many biscuits into her little mouth as she could. busted custard, lolly!
the motherlode: bruno's mum's guetzle book, from which all good things issue forth.
sunday morning: max, bruno, chräbeli mix
mailänderli
chräbeli
biscotti
remind me again why i wanted to make christmas cakes this year?! i don't know what possessed me. i have spent the whole day wrestling with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of christmas cake batter. ok, so i decided to double the recipe so i could give some to friends, but the sheer volume of the resulting mix is verging on the ridiculous. i've made 3 (smallish) cakes, 24 cupcakes and there is STILL more to go. arrrgh! the remaining batter is now sitting in its bowl out on the balcony, which acts as a handy refrigerator (sometimes freezer) this time of year, while i decide what to do with the stuff. most likely i will make one more cake. but then that's it! i don't want to see any more fruit cake, let alone eat any. so, guess what all my friends and rellies are getting for christmas this year......
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