Every year when I make my Christmas Cookies, I try out one or two new recipes. Or new-to-me recipes. Some are traditional cookies, some are modern cookies. One of the two new types that I made this year are these: Speculaas (Dutch) aka Spekulatius (German). They are a traditional Dutch spice cookie, usually rolled very thin and then imprinted with a design. While I have a few imprinting rolling pins, my dough wasn’t cooperating particularly, so instead of the imprinting pin, I went with a Christmas-y cookie stamp. All the same in the end. These cookies are very nice, a lovely traditional spice and will definitely stay in the cookie madness repertoire.
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holidays
So I’m plugging away at Cookie Madness, but I couldn’t help but make one last pie in these pre-Thanksgiving days. This one uses heirloom apples called Baldwins that I got at Russell Orchards last weekend. Very nice apples; firm and not too tart. Loving my lattice work too. The rim was a little messy so I used a leaf cookie cutter to pretty it up a little bit.
As y’all know, every year for Thanksgiving, I make a variation on cranberry sauce, and this year is no different. This year’s variation is a Cranberry Blackberry Portwine (with a touch of nutmeg) Sauce and it is absolutely delicious. Would go super well with the usual poultry (also duck!) but also with a steak/beef. Very warm and enticing.
Often people send me viral photos of cool looking bread design or fancy pie crusts. I love this but one of the things that you often see is the pre-baked pies, but never the end result. Like, what does it look like once You’ve baked it? Is the still as pretty? Or does it all bake together? I decided to give this style of pie — it’s really just a boring old double-crust apple pie, but with the fancy swoosh top crust — a go, and at least with this one, the pattern turned out pretty neat. Pleased with the result.
I know that most people eat Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday and thus I am a day early, but I had time this morning, and won’t tomorrow, so there you have it. Also, in case someone was inspired to make their own and needed a recipe. Every year I make a new variation, but the base recipe stays the same (it’s usually the things that I add — raisins or cranberries or currants or chocolate chips — or this year, apricots) that I swap out. They are actually one of my favorite things and I have to be careful that I don’t snack this whole batch. As you can see, it makes a lot of buns!