Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

I was really lucky at the beginning of this month to get to see a part of the world that not many people get to see...the Canadian North.

 It's funny, because when I was in college I randomly met this guy, and somewhat by chance, he got a job in Edmonton.  We moved to Edmonton and then, completely by chance, I got a job that I hadn't really been trained for at all, and through that job, I ended up traveling to this beautiful, remote part of the world called Yellowknife, where buffalo roam and the sky is in a constant state of sunrise and sunset.

Yellowknife was beautiful to visit and a place that I feel blessed to get to see.  While there, I bought caribou jerky, went dogsledding, and saw the Northern Lights.  It was awesome.

 

 

 

Christmas 2009

A beautiful centerpiece

A great bottle of wine

A festive salad

Traditional trout

Plenty of presents

and an Abundance of tickets

A wonderful Christmas do make.

Merry Christmas!

Vanillekipferl

Vanillekipferl are classic Austrian Christmas cookies.  They're small, delicate, crescent-shaped, and flavored with vanilla and almonds.

The perfect vanillekipferl has a most delicate texture that crumbles almost instantly when you put it in your mouth.  Last time I tried to make vanillekipferl (a few years ago) with a recipe I found on the internet, it was a total disaster.  They were hard as rocks!  This year, Georg's mother emailed me the recipe she uses, and it worked really, really well.

                                                                               

 

You need:

150 grams butter

2 egg yolks

80 grams sugar

1 package of vanilla sugar

200 grams flour

100 grams ground almonds

50 grams powdered sugar

2 additional packages of vanilla sugar

To make:

Cream the butter and sugars together, beat in the egg yolks.  Stir in the ground almonds and finally the flour to form a crumbly dough.  Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

Form the dough into 2 inch long ropes, then shape into crescents.  Bake at 350 degrees for 8-12 minutes, or until cookies are done (the length of time will depend on the size and thickness of the crescent shapes).  While the cookies are baking, mix together the powdered sugar and the packets of vanilla sugar in a pie dish.  When the cookies come out of the oven, allow them to cool just slightly (or else they will break when you try to dredge them in the sugar).  While the cookies are still quite warm, carefully place them in the plate and coat them well with the sugar.  Shake off the excess sugar, and then place on a plate and allow to cool fully.

 

                                                                               

Piparkoogid and a Christmas Tree with Georg and Laura

      

My friend Laura has some Estonian heritage and makes Piparkoogid (Estonian spice cookies) with her family during the holiday season.  This year, she decided to share her recipe and make Piparkoogid with me!

Laura's recipe comes from a recipe book that her grandmother put together, which features not only recipes, but also helpful tips, drawings, and some of her favorite sayings.  It was really fun to look though it.

The dough is flavored with a spice syrup, which you make by warming golden syrup with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and cardamom.  Laura informed us that the dough tastes even better than the baked cookies, so we ate a lot of dough before we started baking.  The flavor of the dough and eventually the cookies was very good--a very complex warmth from the spices and butter.

Piparkoogid are decorated before baking, by applying colored sugar and almonds to the dough which has been made slightly sticky with a brushing of beaten egg.  I think they are typically cut into Chrismas shapes (gingerbread persons, stars, and trees) but we didn't have any Christmas cookie cutters, so we had to make do.

We didn't end up doing a very elegant job of decorating the cookies, as you can probably see from looking at the rather sad Christmas tree to the right.  As we found out, it is really hard to sprinkle colored sugar precisely!

We ended up making kind of a joke out of it, and most of the cookies ended up looking totally bizarre.  We took them to work and everyone ate them though!

The same day, Laura was gracious enough to drive us to get a Christmas tree so we wouldn't have to convince some cab or bus driver to let us take it in their vehicle.  We ended up getting the most beautiful, symmetrical, densely-needled Christmas tree I think I've ever had!