Döner Kebab

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking

Time for a last look back at the festive feasting season!

We started Thanksgiving week by baking…Christmas Funfetti cupcakes? There’s never a bad time for Funfetti!

Of course, the main attraction Thanksgiving week was the turkey dinner:

And seven pies!

We celebrated Nikolaustag with chicken Döner Kebab and gingerbread tiramisu:

The next special dinner was a week later, for Santa Lucia Day, featuring potato pancakes and kielbasa, with cranberry fluff for dessert…and let’s not forget the lussekattes for breakfast!

We had a gingerbread layer cake filled with gingerbread mousse and frosted with molasses cream cheese frosting on Christmas Eve:

And our favorite cherry coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas Day:

But the best meal of the year is the Christmas Day pick-out dinner!

For our “fancy” Christmas dinner, we had bolognese, breaded artichokes, and fresh baked Italian bread:

In keeping with the Italian theme, we had cannoli for dessert:

On New Year’s Eve, we had black bean soup and corn bread:

And our traditional hot chocolate bar, of course!

Our New Year’s Day dinner was enjoyed a day late…I made pork medallions and spaetzle:

And we had a Glühwein-Kuchen for dessert:

We also had a special “Lord of the Rings Day” celebration (on Tolkien’s birthday!), featuring one of the fanciest chicken recipes I make, and “Westfarthing Fairings” from the Recipes from the World of Tolkien cookbook:

For the last feast of the season, Ryan’s birthday dinner, (which also happens to be Epiphany), we had fry bread and chili:

And Boston Cream Pie for dessert:

We did lots of other baking along the way, including a pair of Italian Christmas cookies for Christmas school:

And all of our favorite fancy Christmas cookies…chocolate crinkles, linzer augen, chocolate peppermint, raspberry almond thumbprints, peppermint meltaways, and fig thumbprints:

With the addition of a few of the pudding cookies Bunny made, they created a beautiful Bunter Teller!

For our New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar, we baked two kinds of hot chocolate cookies:

In addition to the Christmas cracker candy I usually make, we also tried a new recipe that had sliced almonds on top:

And on the last day of Christmas, we baked and decorated sugar and gingerbread cookies:

I made a couple of bonus pies along the way, too:

And a bevy of festive drinks, including standards like egg nog and wassail, and some frappe kits from Aldi:

And just as we made a special dessert at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, we ended Epiphany week with a carrot cake:

I think that’s it for festive feasts and holiday baking…I’m ready to close the Markel bakery for a bit!

Nikolaustag 2025

Today is one of my favorite days of the entire Christmas season…Nikolaustag!

We tend to celebrate this holiday in a German way, so of course our main activity today was…Christmas on The Hill?

Yes, some of us spent the afternoon in the Italian neighborhood of St. Louis to attend a fun local event. It wasn’t our normal Nikolaustag, but it was fun to switch things up a bit! And we still had our traditional dinner of chicken Döner Kebab this evening:

This year’s gingerbread dessert was a tiramisu:

And we had our traditional wassail while decorating the tree (I didn’t get a picture of the drink, but I did get a shot of one of this year’s ornaments…the theme was Pokémon). I realized this year that the Fab Five fall into two camps about decorating the tree…three of them want to hang their personal ornaments near each other in a collection, and two of them want to scatter their personal ornaments all throughout the tree. These two methods of decorating are pretty incompatible when five people are trying to hang ornaments, and that results in some hilarious conversations!

It wasn’t quite our regular Nikolaustag, especially since Bunny had to work today, and Turkey was at school taking a scary national math exam, but it was fun!

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking

Now that Epiphany has come and gone, I guess the holiday season is officially over (I’m still not taking my Christmas tree down yet, though!). Let’s take a look back at the festive feasts and holiday baking we enjoyed during the holidays!

As I did last year, I kicked off Thanksgiving week by making pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies:

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we enjoyed our traditional feast:

And TEN pies (the bonus cookie butter pie was still in the freezer)!

We had chicken döner and gingerbread whoopie pies for our postponed St. Nicholas Day dinner:

And for Santa Lucia Day, we had lussekattes, potato pancakes and kielbasa (a day late), and white-chocolate cranberry cupcakes:

We didn’t have a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, but we did have a carrot cake filled with gingerbread mousse:

For Christmas Day breakfast we had our favorite coffee cake:

And the best meal of the year, the pick-out dinner!

I think our M*A*S*H Day dinner counts as a festive feast, because Tony Packo’s was a Christmas gift.

On New Year’s Eve, we had fondue:

And the hot chocolate bar:

New Year’s Day was a full German feast of schnitzel and spaetzle and red cabbage:

With a Black Forest cake for dessert:

We had one more turkey dinner while we waited for the first snowstorm of the year:

And our traditional snow day dinner of French toast the next day:

Our festive feasts always end with Ryan’s birthday dinner…this year, we had chili and fry bread:

And a Frango Mint cake for dessert!

Of course there was plenty of cookie baking, starting with the French Christmas cookies we made in school:

And all of our favorite Christmas cookies!

It made for a beautiful Bunter Teller!

We also enjoyed Christmas Tree Cake treats all season long, including both standard and big cakes, donuts, and ice cream:

And a few festive drinks along the way…wassail and eggnog:

This has been a great season of feasting…now it’s time to give the kitchen a break! (Who am I kidding…I’m already planning the next cake I’m going to bake!)

Nikolaustag 2024

We’re a day late, but today we celebrated Nikolaustag! We wanted to wait until Bunny was home from college, which just happened to be today. We did all of our favorite Nikolaustag things, starting with stockings and decorating the tree. In addition to the children’s yearly ornaments, I also added two new ornaments…a Christmas Tree Cake that Ryan surprised me with this morning, and Hallmark’s rendition of “It’s a Small World.”

We always have wassail while we decorate:

And for dinner, we had our traditional meal of döner kebab:

I like to make a gingerbread dessert for Nikolaustag…this year, it was gingerbread whoopie pies:

This is one of my favorite days of the year, and between Bunny being home and the traditions, it feels like Christmastime is really here!

Nikolaustag

Happy Nikolaustag!

We started the day as we start every St. Nick’s Day…with stockings. The children always receive a new ornament, and this year, the ornaments came from our trip to Disney World. I had such a fun time picking them out at Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe the Magic Kingdom’s Liberty Square back in June!

We always decorate the tree on December 6th…in addition to our Mickey Ears ornaments (and the final installation of the “12 Days of Christmas”), we also added an ornament made from marble from the steps of the US Capitol that we picked up when we toured the building over the summer:

For dinner, as I did last year, I made Döner Kebab. One more year, and it will be a full-fledged tradition!

For dessert, I stuck with the Disney theme and made Mini Gingerbread Bundt Cakes with Orange-Vanilla Sauce from a recipe on the Disney Parks Blog:

We always have wassail on Nikolaustag, too:

Now I feel like the Christmas season has really begun!

A New Tradition for Nikolaustag?

I think we may have started a new tradition for Nikolaustag!

A few weeks ago, I tried making a recipe from Döner Kebab from Dirndl Kitchen. I’ve been looking for more recipes that celebrate our German heritage, and this particular one stood out to me because it has some things in common with shawarma, which we all love. The funny thing about Döner Kebab, though, is that while it is extremely popular in Germany as a fast food, its roots are in Turkey. And then it struck me how much like St. Nicholas that is. He lived and worked in what is modern-day Turkey, but his commemoration date, and particularly his persona as St. Nick, giver of presents, is popular especially in Germany. So I decided that even though it’s a decent amount of work to make homemade Pide, garlic sauce, pickled cabbage, and marinated chicken all on a busy Monday, it would be the perfect meal for Nikolaustag. And it was! It’s already become a family-favorite meal, but I think the connection to where Nicholas of Myra actually lived, and where he is celebrated, especially as connected to our family’s heritage, makes it an extra-special Advent meal, and I hope it becomes a regular part of our St. Nick’s Day traditions!