This is a new type of Christmas Cookie. You see, every year, I experiment with one sort. Sometimes they are a success, sometimes not. And sometimes, while I love the cookies themselves, they are too much of a pain in the neck to make +/- 300 of them, so they don’t get included the next year. This year, I decided to go with a distinctly non-German type recipe — if anything, these Rosemary Apricot Pinecone, with Toasted Pinenuts, almost have a Mediterranean feel to them. They are not too sweet and definitely have a rosemary finish. Most of the sweetness does come from the apricot jam. While the verdict is out on whether they will become part of my regular rotation, they are quite lovely.
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nuts
Nougatkipferl have never been my favorite of my Christmas Cookies to make. There are a number of things wrong with the recipe that I have been using for years, not the least of which is that nougat is really hard to find in the US. Substituting Nutella has usually worked, however this year, Nutella’s ingredient / composition changed somewhat (to much controversy, actually), and that made it more difficult to bake with. So, after a fail or two with the dough, I started from scratch and came up with this recipe. It has a little bit of corn syrup in it, which is not my favorite thing, but seemed to help with the dough’s consistency when I was rolling it out.
I was in the mood to continue the “Harvest” trend here on this here website, but somehow, I am not overly pleased with these cookies. They taste really nice — chocolate-dipped chocolate sugar cookies, with just the right amount of toasted pecans, but somehow, these little squirrels don’t look right to me. Next time, maybe I’ll have the little critters holding a nut, and maybe even paint eyes on them. At any rate, still wanted to post them here. Enjoy.
Next week is Diwali (Deepavali). I’m not Hindu (nor am I anything else), but in one description I’ve read, it described Diwali as a celebration of victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair. Those are ideals that I can get on-board with. One of the things that many of my Indian friends have done is have given sweets for Diwali, so I thought that I would try making some myself. I’ve never made this type of sweet before, and I know that it isn’t a very traditional recipe in any way, but they were easy to make and taste amazing. So Happy Diwali to one and all!
I’ve had company visiting for the weekend (which actually seems to often be the case!) so to make the “hey, sure, you can sleep in the spare bed” more like a bed and breakfast experience, I made some banana-bread like thing to snack on in the morning. I’m not sure if I should call this banana *bread* or *coffee cake* so I went with Bundt Cake, just because of the pan I used. Super light and fluffy; totally yummy.