The holiday season is officially over, so let’s take a look back at all of the festive feasts and holiday baking we enjoyed, starting with Thanksgiving. I think the turkey turned out especially well this time around!
We had our “pick out dinner” on Christmas Day:
And our “fancy” Christmas dinner two days later. I never want to prepare a beef tenderloin any other way!
On New Year’s Eve, we had our traditional hot chocolate bar, but we made it fancy, with the addition of homemade hot chocolate bombs!
And on New Year’s Day, we had our traditional pork tenderloin, with an untraditional (for us) side of twice-baked potatoes:
On to the baking. Of course there were pies (seven!) for Thanksgiving:
We made five types of German Christmas cookies in Christmas School:
And another ten types of Christmas cookies besides!
There were eight different cakes throughout the season:
And some other various treats including Christmas cracker candy and lussekattes:
This was a fun and delicious season, but now the kitchen is closed!
If there’s any day that rivals Pie Day for making our house smell like a bakery, it’s my annual Christmas Baking Day.
Yes, I’ve already been doing some Christmas baking…German cookies for Christmas School, lussekattes for Santa Lucia Day, other various treats here and there. And we’re saving the gingerbread and sugar cookie baking for the week after Christmas. But there’s always one day prior to Christmas each year when I bake all my “fancy” Christmas cookies, and that’s what I did on Saturday…28 dozen of them!
I baked our old favorites (raspberry-almond thumbprints and chocolate peppermint). I made some newer favorites that will probably be old favorites in a few years (chocolate crinkles and linzer). I tried a few new recipes that looked interesting to me (meringue kisses and peppermint meltaways). And I tried to recreate an old, store-bought favorite with decent success (a duplicate of Keebler’s anise-flavored Jingles).
Yes, there was a point when I couldn’t find our kitchen under all the cookies. And yes, it feels like we’re living in a bakery. But I love organizing pretty plates of Christmas cookies, and sampling some along the way!
This year’s Christmas School theme was Christmas in Germany (and Austria). Everything came together in an amazing fashion, so that we had lots of experiences, read lots of stories, did lots of baking, and made some cool crafts. But first, an ornament craft to remind us of our summer vacation…memory spheres:
Back to Christmas in Germany. We got to meet the Christkind (an angel who is often the present-bearer in Germany) when we were at Christmas Traditions in St. Charles, MO:
We made five different German Christmas cookies that we had never made before…Lebkuchen (German-style gingerbread), Vanillekipferl (vanilla crescents), Pfeffernusse (spice cookies), Kardamom Plaetzchen (chocolate dipped cardamon cookies), and Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars). We got to try some new baking techniques, which was a lot of fun, and the house has smelled amazing!
We also made five crafts inspired by Germany or of German origin…painted hearts inspired by Lebkuchenherzen (gingerbread hearts), a Weihnachtspyramide, ornaments inspired by the German flag and printed with words related to Advent, Fröbelstern (elaborately folded paper stars named for Friedrich Fröbel, the creator of the first kindergarten in Bad Blankenburg, Thuringia, Germany), and the German classic, Zwetschgenmännle (prune people).
Here’s a look at the Weihnachtspyramide in motion…I think it was our favorite craft!
We visited our town Christkindlmarket several times this month:
And we even got to attend a Weihnachtsgottesdienst (German Christmas service)!
It’s not often that Christmas School comes together this well, and provides us with so many fun opportunities…I really enjoyed it!
Chickadee and I have been enjoying baking recipes from the My Little Pony Baking Book she received for Christmas. We’ve made at least one recipe from each chapter of the book at this point…here’s a look at everything we’ve tried so far:
Strawberry Cupcakes
Celebration Cinnamon Rolls
Piñata Cupcakes
Pony Poke Cake
Chocolate Dream Pie
Cupcake Cones
Peanut Butter Candy Cookies
Out-of-this-World Brownies
Chaos Cookies
Frosted Sugar Cookie Bars
Apple Fritter Bread
Purple Velvet Cake
The recipes in the book are delicious, but they’re also a lot of fun, and they all look amazing…we’re really looking forward to baking more of them!
Happy Twosday! We have been looking forward to Tuesday, 2-22-22, for months, and we made the most of the day!
Chickadee and I made a Twosday tutu:
We decided to honor this auspicious day by also celebrating our favorite made-up family holiday, Bobunk, which meant we got to have Beast Craft BBQ for dinner:
And, in addition to Twosday and Bobunk, it’s also George Washington’s Birthday, so we watched Hamilton. After we were done crying, Chickadee and I played a few hands of Dos:
To round out the day, I made “Twotti-Frutti cookies for dessert:
It wasn’t easy coming up with things that fit the Twosday theme, but I think I did a pretty good job!
Can you stand one more look back at the holiday season? I hope so, because it’s time to wrap-up all of the festive feasts and baked goods I prepared from Thanksgiving through Epiphany!
Our Thanksgiving dinner was fairly standard, although I did make a second kind of stuffing, and instead of just roasted carrots, I made a blend of roasted winter vegetables (which did include carrots):
Our pick-out dinner is always my favorite meal of the year, and I thought it was extra special with the full charcuterie board I prepared:
Our fancy Christmas dinner (which we had on the Sunday after Christmas) featured beef Wellington:
Our New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar looked a little different this year, but it was still delicious!
Pork tenderloin is becoming something of a tradition on New Year’s Day:
And finally, our most recent “festive feast,” Ryan’s birthday dinner last week:
I made ten pies over the holidays (with a lot of help from the girls):
We baked more cookies than I can count, including several new varieties, my favorite of which was the Linzer Augen:
“Only” six cakes this time around (do Yule logs count as cakes?):
And some other assorted treats, including my first attempt at cannoli and gingerbread Oreo truffles:
It’s not like I’m going to stop cooking anytime soon, because we still need to eat, but I’m looking forward to planning some simpler meals for a bit!
This week was a lot of fun, because it was Christmas School! Once Ladybug took her science test, and Chickadee finished up her science assignments as well, all we did was read A Christmas Carol and Letters from Father Christmas and bake cookies, do crafts, and watch The Nutcracker.
On Monday we watched the Dutch National Ballet Nutcracker, made traditional paper snowflakes, and baked Christmas Island coconut macaroons:
On Tuesday we watched the Royal Ballet Nutcracker, made popsicle stick snowflakes, and baked chocolate Madelines:
On Wednesday we watched the Bolshoi Ballet Nutcracker, made beaded snowflakes, and baked Filipino puto seko:
On Thursday we watched the Vienna Staatsoper Nutcracker, made q-tip snowflakes, and baked Czech poppyseed cookies:
Today we watched the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker (my favorite!), made 3-D paper snowflakes, and baked chocolate crinkle cookies:
Several of the snowflake crafts we made could be used as ornaments, but we also had a specific ornament for the year…painted clay ornaments cut out with Christmas cookie cutters I bought just for this project:
In the end, we tried three new cookies recipes (plus a variation on Madelines we had never made before) and two new craft projects. It was fun to have both and old new things to try, and it was nice to have a relaxing week of school!
I often take a look back at the holiday baking I did from Thanksgiving through Epiphany; this year, I thought it would be fun to look back at all of the holiday meals and treats we’ve enjoyed, starting with Thanksgiving dinner:
We had our pick out dinner on Christmas Day this time:
And our fancy Christmas dinner on the Sunday after Christmas:
Of course we had our traditional New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar:
And a special New Year’s Day dinner to start the new year right:
And finally, our Ryan’s Birthday/Epiphany feast:
On to the baking. There were pies for Thanksgiving:
And several cakes throughout the season, for St. Nicholas Day, Santa Lucia Day, Jesus’ Birthday, the fancy Christmas dinner, and New Year’s Day:
We baked so many Christmas cookies!
And an obligatory “other” section, for things like lussekattes, coffee cake, and even some special holiday beverages:
I put in a little extra effort this year, to make up for the fact that we couldn’t go anywhere or do most of our normal Christmas activities. In the end, I think we’ll have a lot of delicious memories from this holiday season!
Hymn of the Week–“Where Shepherds Lately Knelt” (Lutheran Service Book #369)
It’s been a long time since we’ve dedicated a week to “Christmas School,” but if ever a year needed it, it’s 2020. So this week was spent making ornaments, baking cookies, reading Christmas stories, and watching different versions of The Nutcracker.
I was especially excited about the ornaments. I had originally planned for the children to make them two years ago, but that was the year I broke my ankle, and I just didn’t have the energy to deal with it. Last year I found ornament kits that I really wanted to make, so these beautiful sequin ornaments got pushed back one more year. We had lots of options for colors and sizes:
They were definitely worth the wait (and the seed beads that may be rolling around the kitchen forever!), because they are beautiful!
We also decorated gingerbread houses, something we have done in the past, but it’s been a few years, and I’ve never had a house for each child (the mansion was a group project).
Speaking of gingerbread houses, we did get out of the house to see the gingerbread creations in the store windows on Main Street. We might not have been able to do most of the Christmas activities I had planned this year, but it was nice to do one familiar thing!
This was also “Cookie Week.” I decided we should bake a different kind of cookie every day, and they should all be cookies we don’t usually bake. On Monday, we made eggnog blossoms, Tuesday was chocolate crinkles, Wednesday we baked kolacky, Thursday we made both Madelines and palmiers, and today we baked spritz.
We did a lot of reading this week, too. We finished A Christmas Carol, and made it through most of Letters from Father Christmas (I plan on finishing that next week). We also read a bunch of storybooks:
Lucia Morning in Sweden
Lucia: Saint of Light
The Christmas Tale of Peter Rabbit
Jackie’s Gift
The Carpenter’s Gift
Fear Not Joseph
Madeline’s Christmas
The 12 Days of Christmas
The Three Wise Women of Christmas
The Nativity
It was also “Nutcracker Week.” This is not totally unheard of for us, although this year we were supposed to see a live production. We watched a different version every day:
Monday: Ballet Company of The National Opera of Ukraine
Tuesday: Dutch National Ballet
Wednesday: Wiener Staatsballett
Thursday: The Royal Ballet
Friday: The Bolshoi Ballet
We saved our favorite, the San Francisco Ballet production, to watch tomorrow. If we have time next week, we’ll watch the Berlin Nutcracker, too…that’s the only one we have on disc that we didn’t schedule for this week.
This was a really fun week of school, but I’m looking forward to taking a break for a few weeks. Merry Christmas!
I’ve shared our favorite cookie recipe before…now it’s time to take a look at our new twist on it!
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, melted
2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
4 cups of your favorite baking chips
sea salt
Preheat the oven to 325. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, eggs, and egg yolks until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the baking chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets (cookies should be about 3 inches apart). Sprinkle with sea salt. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven.. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.
