ADVENT ADVENT III – A (kind of) Christmas tale
Photos: Chiara Cigliutti
Recipes: Pio
Text: Leonie Kantratowicz
Once upon a time there was a brother and a sister, their names were Hans and Greta, they lived somewhere in Hamburg with their father and his new one in a really puny, not cool at all apartment for one hell lot of money. Truly, Hamburg’s housing market is a real mess. Punishing the little guy, let me tell you
The four of them shared this old shack. To be honest, it wouldn't have been possible either, because stepmother and biological father were pretty poor devils. Although the father tried very hard, as a representative for tupper goods and ashtrays, there was little to be gained in times of the Internet and the anti-smoking movement. In addition to that, his old woman was a real dragon, but, unlike the mythical creatures, didn’t sit on hard-earned money, but on the couch, in front of the shopping channel. Her latest purchase was a Thermomix. Extremely bling bling, but by buying it in the first half hour you got three tupperwares for free. As I said, it was a difficult time for representatives
Now it was Christmas all over the country and the city showed itself in the most dazzling colors and lights and the most beautiful temptations lured from everywhere. Since the family bliss was again out of the window, the dear father thought of making the family happy by spending his last little earnings and inviting them to the Christmas market. If the old bag drank herself senseless, he might even be able to save money after all.
They were already putting on their boots when the stepmother approached the father with a letter in her hand. The GEZ. Well, that was just the last straw. “Oh no, what should become of us? How can we harm our poor children's livers if we ourselves don't have enough for a single punch?” The father let his head hung sadly.
"You know what, husband" replied the woman, lowering her voice, "we take the subway with the children and take them to the place with the most people."
"To the Jungfernstieg?" Asked the father.
"Yes exactly. We give each of them a shortbread biscuit, then we disappear into the crowd, leave them alone, and we go get shit faced at town hall. They will never find the way out again ”. But the father shook his head tentatively: "But I could never leave my dear children down there."
“Oh, you fool. Then all four of us will have to stay sober…! ”And so the father gave in.
The two children, who had been standing there all the time had, of course, heard every word. They were poor, but they weren't deaf after all. Greta was about to start crying when Hans patted her head and said: “Greta, don’t you worry. I'll handle it."
So the four got on the subway and, as planned, the stepmother handed the siblings a rock-hard pastry from the previous year at the Jungfernstieg train station. "But not all at once," were her last words - then stepmother and father had disappeared between the passers-by. "Come on, Greta, let's look for the exit and if we don't find the way, we’ll walk back to the subway and then home." The children made their way through the hallways and halls, up and down stairs, past bakeries, Turkish fruit dealers and billboards and yet they simply didn’t seem to be able to find their way to the surface. Even the trail back to the subway, made from shortbread crumbs that Hans, the foxy smarty pants, had laid, was absolutely useless because the bloody pigeons, who had the same problem as the children, really seem to eat every crap.
It was the third morning the siblings had spent in the subway station when they reached a house in the depths of the corridors that made your caries grow from just staring at it. The walls were made of gingerbread, the roof was covered with marzipan bread, the windows were white meringue, and white frosting was dripping from the edge of the roof.
Cheering in happiness, Hans and Greta ran towards the sugar house, broke some off and gobbled it up greedily -
"Ugh, what's that ?!" Hans exclaimed. "That's disgusting!" Whined Greta, spitting a piece of gingerbread on the floor. "Hard nope!," said Hans, banging his fist against the gluten-free front door. "Hey! Open up!"
A real whole babe opened the door and, boy, oh boy, if Hans had been a little older, this story might have turned out rather different, but we are in a different genre here.
"Crunchy, crispy creaks, who knips me at the cottage?" Asked the woman.
"Certainly no one does here anymore" replied Hans, pointing disapprovingly at the pastries. "This stuff has been here since the beginning of September." The woman rolled her eyes, annoyed. "Yes, what should I do, boy?" She asked, shrugging. “This is a seasonal business. You can’t bitch about the law of supply and demand and in the current economic phase you have to keep up with the market as a small business owner.”
"Down with capitalism!" yelled Greta, punching the air with her fist and this enchanted the young lady so much that she invited the two children to the no longer gingerbread house for a few shots. There the idea came up to bake the house again with the most wonderful cookies on this side of the universe . The smell from the ovens attracted many people, they even came from the streets and from the shops on the surface, and the lost souls from the gangways of the train station cried with happiness when they saw the many delicacies. Even the father showed up. After the old crone had fallen into the Thermomix as drunk as a boozer and shredded herself, he had returned, sickly worried, to find his children. Since then he has been supplying the bakery with tupper boxes as to go packaging (sustainability and stuff) and selling his ashtrays as biscuit cutters for XXL cookies.
So, and if they haven't died, they're probably still baking - no one can get out of the station down there anyway. The fact that no one addresses the circumstances of a father abandoning his own children in order to get rat arsed, is still a mystery to me to this day, but well, who cares.
Christmas is coming soon.
Mini nut croissant
INGREDIENTS for 16 pieces:
Dough:
110 g wheat flour, type 550
60 g soft butter
50 g double cream cheese
30 g of powdered sugar1 pinch of salt
Filling:
40 g of pecan kernels
50 g brown sugar
½ tsp ground tonka bean
PREPARATION:
Cover a tray with baking paper. Knead all dough ingredients homogeneously and form into dough, then chill for one hour. Grind pecans fine, but not too fine and mix with sugar and tonka. Place the dough on half of the filling and roll it out (26 cm), then sprinkle with the rest of the filling and cut diagonally into 16 pieces of cake. Roll up the dough pieces from the outside to the top and place on the tray, then chill for one hour. Preheat oven to 180 ° C (165 ° C convection). Bake croissants in the oven on the middle rail for 15 minutes.
Salted caramel cookies
INGREDIENTS for 20 pieces:
1 vanilla pod
175 g soft butter
120 g sugar
¼ tsp salt
250 g wheat flour, type 550
200 g caramel candies
40 g bakery creamSalt flakes
PREPARATION:
Halve the vanilla pod and scratch out the pulp. Beat butter with sugar and salt until very frothy, then stir in the flour in three steps - chill dough for one hour.
Preheat oven to 175 ° C (160 ° C convection) and cover a tray with baking paper. Form 1,5 centimeter thick biscuits with 6 cm in diameter, place on the tray and form in the middle a bit of a hollow.
Bake for 18 minutes in the oven on the middle rail, taking the biscuits out of the oven after 9 minutes and modeling the troughs again. Take out later and cool on a wire rack. In the meantime heat up the caramel sweets with cream in the microwave and stir until smooth, then pour in the biscuit troughs and sprinkle with salt flakes.
Soft chocolate amarettini with chili (pleasant spiciness!)
INGREDIENTS for 25 pieces:
¼ red chili pepper, as desired!
50 g dark chocolate, at least 70% cocoa content
30 ml of coconut oil
35 ml maple syrup
140 g wheat flour, type 550
1 heaped teaspoon tartar powder
20 g of dark cocoa powder
2 egg whites (L)
1 pinch of salt
125 g of sugarabout
50 g powdered sugar, to roll
PREPARATION:
Core the chili pepper and mince it very finely. Chop the chocolate and melt with coconut oil and chili in a metal bowl over a hot water bath - then stir in the maple syrup. Mix flour with tartar powder and cocoa and sift.
Beat the egg whites with salt until stiff, then add the sugar while continuing to beat. Fold the chocolate mass and flour mixture with a spoon under the meringue mixture - chill the dough for 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 180 ° C (165 ° C circulating air) and cover a baking tray with baking paper. Form cherry-sized balls (13 g) and roll completely in powdered sugar, then place with distance in between on the tray and bake for 10 minutes in the oven on the middle rail.
Crunchy ears with dates and dried pears (alcoholic!)
INGREDIENTS for 25 pieces:
80 g pecan kernels, substitute walnuts
100 g of dried pears
100 g dates, "soft" -dried
40 ml brown rum
1 pinch of cinnamon powder
300 g of fresh puff pastry,
1 egg white (M)
150 g apricot jam
PREPARATION:
Preheat the oven to 180 (160 ° C convection) and cover a baking tray with baking paper.
Finely chop nuts and roast in the oven or in a pan without fat, then cool. Core the dates and dice them very finely with the pears. Mix everything together and marinate with rum and cinnamon. Brush puff pastry with egg whites and thinly cover with filling.
Roll the dough sheet from both long sides like a snail to the middle, then in the middle between the two rolls brush with egg whites and lightly squeeze. Turn the roll over, cut into centimeter thick slices and place on the prepared sheet, then bake for 18 minutes in the oven on the middle rail until golden brown. Then pull out and cool.
Heat the jam in a small saucepan and sift through a sieve into another pot. Glaze the crispy ears on the surface with hot jam.
Snowballs
INGREDIENTS for 20 pieces:
85 g macadamia nuts
40 g white chocolate
150 g wheat flour, type 550
120 g soft butter
30 g powdered sugar
¼ tsp cinnamon powder
1 pinch of salt
40 g powdered sugar for rolling
PREPARATION:
Cover a baking tray with baking paper. Roughly chop the nuts and roast them light brown in the oven, then remove and cool. Chop the chocolate finely. Halve the vanilla pod and scrape out the pulp.
Knead flour, butter, powdered sugar, cinnamon, vanilla pulp and salt until homogeneous. Finally work in nuts and chocolate, then chill for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 170 ° C. Form walnut-sized balls (approx. 20 g) from the dough and place them on the tray with a little space between them. Bake in the oven on the middle shelf for 10 minutes, then remove and roll hot in powdered sugar.
Christmas tree
INGREDIENTS for 48 pieces:
Shortcrust:
150 g of wheat flour, type 550, plus some flour to roll out
80 g soft butter
50 g powdered sugar
1 egg yolk (S)
1 tablespoon of cold water
1 pinch of salt
topping:
48 Toffifee
6 egg white (M)
1 pinch of salt
480 g of fine sugar
30 ml lemon juice
green food coloring
sugar pearls
PREPARATION:
Cover a tray with baking paper. For the shortcrust pastry, knead all ingredients homogeneously, then roll out 3 mm thick on a floured surface and cut out 48 circles with a diameter of 4 cm. Place circles on the tray and chill for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 175 ° C (165 ° C convection). Bake the shortcrust pastry in the oven on the middle shelf for 11 minutes in a light brown color, then remove it (set the oven to 90 ° C with air circulation) and cool on a wire rack.
For the meringue, whisk the egg whites with salt until stiff, then gradually add the sugar while continuing to whisk. Then add lemon juice and beat for further 10 minutes, then stir in the food coloring and fill into a large pastry bag with a star nozzle (e.g. No. 12). Spray a swab of meringue on the biscuits, then place toffifee on / in it and in two further steps spray a "fir tree" over the toffifee. Decorate with pearls and dry in the oven on the center rail for an hour.
Pistachio sticks with lemon thyme
INGREDIENTS for 20 pieces:
150 g peeled pistachios
25 g apricots, soft dried
2 stems of lemon thyme
50 g marzipan mass
15 g egg white
30 g of sugar
10 g honey
10 g wheat flour, type 550
1 knife tip of tartar powder
PREPARATION:
Preheat the oven to 160 ° C (150 ° C convection) and cover a tray with baking paper. Finely grind 125 g pistachios, chop the rest. Finely dice the apricots. Strip the thyme from the stem and cut finely.
Roughly grate the marzipan and knead with ground pistachios, egg white, sugar, honey, flour, tartar powder and thyme to a homogeneous mass. Divide the dough into 20 portions (approx. 13 g) and form into 8-9 cm sticks, then roll in the remaining pistachios and place on the baking sheet. Bake pistachio sticks in the oven on the middle shelf for 11-12 minutes.
Poppy flowers with sour cherry
INGREDIENTS for 50 pieces
Dough:
175 g wheat flour, type 550
½ tsp tartar powder
1 vanilla pod
1 lemon, organic
100 g soft butter
75 g of fine sugar
100 g poppy seed
1 pinch of salt
1 egg (L)
topping:
approx. 100 g sour cherry jam
PREPARATION:
Cover two trays with baking paper. Mix the flour with the tartar powder. Halve the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the pulp. Wash the lemon hot, then dry and finely grate the zest. Beat butter with sugar, poppy seeds, vanilla pulp, lemon zest and salt until fluffy, then stir in the egg and finally the flour mixture.
Using a piping bag and a star nozzle (e.g. No. 10), spread the dough rosette-shaped on baking paper with a little space inbetween and press small hollows into the center of the biscuit with a ball cutter or something similar: refrigerate the dough for 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 170 ° C (160 ° C convection) and bake the cookies for 11 minutes each, then remove and cool completely. Fill later with half a teaspoon of jam.
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