These may not look like much, not particularly festive really, but they are really really yummy. I took my standard brioche-style danishes, added some raisins,dried currants and chopped dried apricots, and made them into extra special Sourdough Holiday Quark + Fruit Brioche-Style Danish. Fairly “plain” looking on the outside, but packed with flavor. If you can’t find quark — and goodness knows it is nearly impossible (I made my own) — you can substitute sour cream or creme fraise. Breakfast or a sweet holiday snack for days.
As many of you know, I try to make many of my Christmas pressies myself (including of course, cookie madness!), so trying to get a head start on some, I made Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate Mix. Quite easy to make, though bashing the hard caramels to bits first with a meat mallet and then the food processor was loud! I put ratios in the recipe instead of exact measurements, in case you wanted to make a lot or a little.
Three things went into the making of these Swedish Sourdough Cardamom Buns: 1. despite the fact that I am baking like crazy with Cookie Madness, I have to still feed Alice in Wondoughland, 2. I was having not such a great day and needed to cheer myself up; baking usually does that and 3. I love — no, I mean love-love Cardamom. If you aren’t a sourdough person, there is a yeasted version of these Kardemummabullar on this site as well. In the meantime, I am going to try not to eat all of these in one sitting. Yummy.