Christmas Eve

Sunshine

Cats chilling out and enjoying the warm sun

Crazy eyes

Smoking salmon and shrimps

Bread wating to be baked: rye flour sourdough bread flavoured with anis, fennel and caraway

Fresh bread...yammy

Greek salad

Orange salad

Self made cream cheese flavoured with parsley, caraway and piment d'espelette

Smoked salmon

Bean-tomato salad

Smoked shrimps and smoked duck breast

Pumpkin casserole

We were both off!...so what a lovely evening we had :)

Merry Christmas everybody!

I want to wish you all peaceful and relaxing Christmas with your family and loved ones. Hope you having some great food and drink :) 

By us will be served self-smoked salmon, shrimps and duck breast, cream cheese flavoured with piment d'espelette, parsley and caraway, bean salad, greek salad, pumpkin rice casserole and finnish christmas bread. As a dessert we will have chocolate fondue with fruits. We have also decided to open two of the wine bottles we brought from South Africa in 2012: La Motte Sauvignon blanc and for after dinner De Krans Pink Port. Now follows some nice christmas time photos from Switzerland:

Zürich, Sechseläutenplatz

Zürich, Limmat

Zürich, Bahnhofstrasse

Today (Christmas Eve) morning a fabulous jogging and sunrise

View, sunrise and a weather like these: one can only start the Christmas with a fantastic inner peace :)

Sunday: Orange sablés

Orange sablés with hazelnut

Last but not least: orange sablés. Don't know if they specially have something to do with Christmas but I wanted to do something with orange because I had some oranges slowly getting old. I took the basic recipe from Pauli which is like the bible for the Swiss cook trainees. I made couple of changes, of course.

Mix the dry ingredients

 Orange sablés

310 g butter

155 g icing sugar

60 g eggwhite

vanilla (seeds from pod or grinded)

pinch of salt

480 g wheat flour

1 box (100 g) candied orange peel (Vanini Orangeat)

zest of 2 oranges

(hazelnuts)

* Cream the icing sugar and butter

* Add eggwhite

* Mix flour, vanilla, orange zest, candied orange, salt and

add to the batter and mix quickly to a dough.

* Let harden in the fridge

* Form bars and let harden again

* Brush the bars with eggwhite and roll in sugar

* Cut, place on the baking tray and add the hazelnut if wanted

* Bake at 180 Celsius for about 10 min.

Ready to be cooled down

Eggwhite and sugar

Before baking

They turned out nice, didn't they?

Saturday: Anis-Chräbeli

Anis-Chräbeli

Today I want to share with you a recipe of Anis-Chräbeli. These are my favourite Christmas cookies here in Switzerland. Like with the other Swiss cookies, you can read more about this guetzli in German at the Kulinarisches Erbe der Schweiz. Briefly, the origin of Chräbeli is not known. First recipe can be found in a book published 1773. In and around Baden the Chräbelis are eaten around the year and elsewere in Switzerland around Christmas. The real Anis-Chräbeli From Baden are stone hard and one should be careful not to break ones teeth :D Normaly I have bough the ones from Hug and they are not quite as hard but hard enough.

I took the recipe for my Anis-Chräbeli from Saisonküche. It worked out okay but I actually prefer the ones from shop. Maybe next time I try some other recipe or maybe I have to let them dry out longer so that they will be harder.

The ingredients

Anis-Chräbeli

2 tbsp anisseeds

1/2 lemon

250 g icing sugar

2 big eggs

1/2 tbsp kirsch or lemon juice

300 g flour

1 pinch baking powder

* Toast the anis on a dry pan

* Beat the eggs and icing sugar to a foam (about 10 min)

* Add kirsch (lemon juice) and lemon zest

* Mix anis, flour, baking powder and add the mixture to the egg foam

* Mix quickly into a dough

* Place in the fridge for about 1 hour

* Form a long bar and cut pieces of about 6 cm long. Form a shape as in the photos.

* Let dry in a room temperature for 12 hours (I would let even longer)

* Bake in 140 C for about 20 min.

* Cool down

Forming the chräbeli

Forming the chräbeli

Enjoy!

Friday: Grittibänz

Happy Saint Nicholas Day and happy independence day for the Finns and the ones in Finland! In Switzerland on the Saint Nicholas Day one traditionally eats Grittibänz. I know it's technically not a cookie/guetzli, but because it's a special day I though to post about Grittibänz instead of some cookies.

Well okay, I'm no master with the Grittibänz but they did taste good.

Grittibänz is made of sweet dough rised with yeast and formed to look like a man. Before I have always used a finnish recipe for pulla but this time I tried out the recipe of Swissmilk because I liked the idea of lemon zest in the dough. I replaced the cinnamon with vanilla and made couple of other small changes. The webpage Swissmilk is by the way a really good place to find ideas for baking and cooking.

Getting ready for the oven

Grittibänz

600 g zopfmehl/wheat flour

1 tsp salt

100 g sugar

1 pack dry yeast (30 g fresh)

2 1/2 dl milk

100 g butter

1 egg

zest of 1 lemon

1 tsp of grinded vanilla

(coarse sugar, raisins for deco)

* Mix flour, dry yeast, salt, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest in a mixer bowl

* place the soft butter on the top of the mixture.

* start mixing with the hook attachment and add the lukewarm milk and egg to the mixture

* Let the machine knead the dough for some minutes

* Let the dough about dobble up in volume in a warm place

* From the "bun men" and let raise again for about 30 min.

* Brush with eggwash and place the wanted decoration on the top

* Bake at 190 Celsius for about 12 min

Suprised

Wondering

The biggest smile

Thursday: Vanillekipferl

Yummy!

Wikipedia: "Vanillekipferl are Austrian, German, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian small, crescent shaped biscuits." If you interested to read more about Vanillekipferl, you can check out the Wikipedia aricle, it's in English as well as in German. The best Vanillekipferl I have ever tasted I got from Peter last year...maybe he cares to share his recipe with us?

I took my recipe from the course material booklet of Kreativer Süssspeisenkurs of Gabriela Holenstein and instead of Vanillekipferl they were called Vanillegipfel.

The dough is ready

Vanillegipfel

250 g wheat flour

1 pinch of salt

200 g butter

75 g icing sugar

10 g vanillasugar

seeds of 1/4 vanilla pod

100 g white grinded almonds

* Mix flour and salt

* Add butter in small cubes and mix with paddle attachment until crumbly

* Add the rest of the ingredients into butter-flour mixture and mix into a dough

* Cover up and place in the fridge for about halh an hour

* Keep the dough cold while forming rolls of finger thickness

* Cut the rolls in equally long pieces and form into half moons

* Place in the cool place for about 15 min

* Bake in 180 C for about 10 min

* Cool down and bust with icing/vanilla icing sugar

Cutting equally long pieces

Before baking

After baking

Icing sugar is the finishing touch...and no I'm not happy with the shape :(

Have a piece! The service dish is Mariskooli from Iittala, finnish design.

Wednesday: Joulupipari

This is what you need. And the beer was for me not for the dough ;D I wanted some Glühwein and unfortunately didn't have any at hand but the cuban beer was also a nice companion for my baking.

In Finland we call these cookies joulupipari or piparkakku and pretty much every family bakes/buys some for the Advent time and Christmas. When I was a kid in my family we used to bake the first joulupiparis for the beginning of the December because then my sister has her birthday. Nowadays I pretty much do the same and bake them during the first week of December.

Piparkakku is a bit similar to a gingerbread and lebkuchen. The Finnish piparkakku probably originates form the German Lebkuchen. The Swedish pepparkaka is pretty much the same thing as piparkakku...so, if you are too lazy to try this recipe yourself you can drive to the closest Ikea and by them there ;D I, of course, claim that mine are about thousand times better than the ones in Ikea :D One warning I should give thoug: The Piparkakku dough is extremely addictive and you might end up eating a great deal of it.

I always have an observer in the kitchen

I have been using the same recipe already for many years. I think it originates from a recipe booklet of Finnish dairy company Valio but I'm not 100 procent sure. And by the way, for those looking for Piment/maustepippuri in Switzerland, I bought mine at Globus delicatessen store.

Joulupipari

2 dl molasses (Switzerland from Coop: Véron tres bon)

2 tsp cinnamon, grinded

1 tsp allspice/piment, grinded

1 tsp clove, grinded

1 tsp ginger, grinded

400 g butter

5 dl sugar

1 egg

2 dl cream

3 tsp baking soda (Switzerland from Coop: Natron)

14 dl wheat flour (In Switzerland + 1 dl)

* Heat up the molasses, add all the spices and mix well. Cool down

* Cream the butter and sugar with the paddle attachment

* Add the egg while continuing to mix with the paddle attachment

* Add the molasses and cream and mix well

* Add the flour to which the soda is mixed. Avoid unnecessary kneading.

* Place the dough in the fridge over night.

* Roll out the dough thin.

*Cut the desired sizes and shapes.

* Bake in 200 C for about 8 min.

You will need a rolling pinn and various different cutters. Piparkakku can be of any shape or size.

Cutting out piparkakku of a cat shape

Ready for the oven

Ready to eat

In Finland we also prepare Christmas tree decorations from the Piparkakku dough. Normally they are the shape of a big heart with a name on them. Before baking you should do a small hole on the top so that later you can tie a ribbon to it.