Christmas Update Part 3 - The Wonderful Gingerbread Lighthouse

I mentioned a while back that I was working on a gingerbread house this year - a house of my own design. It turned out to be a lighthouse.

Seeing as how we (that is, my mother and I) have never made a gingerbread house before that wasn't store-bought, we sort of cheapskated it and bought ready-made gingerbread dough. If you're a hardcore baker, do go ahead and make your own.

This is less of a recipe and more of a chance to show off the fun I had, so here goes - without further ado, here is my first foray into the world of pastry-based architecture:




This house is 98% gingerbread, with the only non-gingerbread components being the gelatin-sheets used for window-glazing, the thin chocolate pieces used as tiles for the roof, and the royal icing used for the decorations. It's all held together by melted sugar, which is probably the most efficient glue in the universe.

Christmas Update part 2 - Saffron Pancake

Someone once said that to make an apple-pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. If there was ever any dessert worth reinventing the universe for, saffron pancake would be it.

It's one of those enduring family traditions around Christmas - as essential, if not more, to me, than even the Christmas tree. And it's very, very easy to make.

Saffron Pancake
The best dessert in the known universe.

Christmas Update part 1 - Knäck and Chesspiece Cookies

(This was going to be one of those big all-in-one updates, except I disagreed with the read-more-break function, and now I'm splitting it up into three instead.)

Christmas! A time of snow (except we haven't got any), good cheer, presents and good old family traditions! ... And food. Because for those of us who aren't religious, Christmas is mostly about food.

I've said that I'm going to use this blog to spread a few Swedish recipes around - and now I'm putting those words into action, by introducing you to some of my Christmas-y baking traditions.

First up - knäck and Chessboard Cookies!

Knäck
Because you weren't using those teeth anyway.

Cinnamon Pie

Today, we're completely flying blind. I found this recipe after an extensive Wiki-walk (you know, the kind where you start by searching Wikipedia for something completely innocent, like the date they shot JFK, and end up, hours later, with fifteen tabs open, ranging from wool-production in New Zealand to the national politics of 13th Century Mongolia), and as there was no picture available, I started out in complete ignorance of what the thing was supposed to look like.


First step is obviously to round up the ingredients.

Homemade Snickers

I remember being eleven years old, visiting a classmate's house. I don't remember clearly what we did all day (except that they might have tried to force make-up on me - clearly a fool's errand), but I do remember the snow falling outside in big, fluffy handfulls, and the warm light in their kitchen.

But most of all, I remember the drop-dead delicious homemade snickers her mother made for us. I've been craving them ever since, but I couldn't remember how they were made. My life was a desert empty of homegrown, stick-to-your-ribs snickers until I realised that we live in the information age, and everything I need to know, I can learn from Google.

A few minutes of googling later, I had my recipe, and was well on my way to making snickers.

Brownies

Welcome back to the world of baking-misadventures! This week, we're making brownies.