It’s finally time for a look back at all of the Festive Feasts we enjoyed over the holiday season, and all the baking we did!
Let’s start with Thanksgiving, which was our traditional turkey dinner with the addition of some delicious roasted fennel this year:
And a record-tying nine pies!
Our next big holiday was Nikolaustag, and it’s become a tradition for us to enjoy Döner kebab on that day (or, as was the case this time, several days later, once Bunny got home from college). We also had a gingerbread-based dessert as has become our custom…this time, I made gingerbread bars with a cream cheese frosting that were amazing!
On Santa Lucia Day, we enjoyed lussekattes for breakfast, and potato pancakes with smoked salmon and Kielbasa for dinner (a day early), plus an cranberry-orange layer cake with rosemary for dessert:
On Christmas Eve, we had a peppermint chip cake after church:
And coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas morning:
On Christmas Day, we had the best dinner of the year, the “pick out dinner.”
And then things got kind of messed up because I hurt my back. We postponed the fancy Christmas dinner we were supposed to have on the 27th, but we did manage to have our annual hot chocolate bar on New Year’s Eve:
And I also postponed the (different) fancy dinner we were supposed to have on New Year’s Day, but I did manage to make a gingerbread layer cake with molasses mousse filling and cinnamon whipped cream frosting, garnished with sugared cranberries:
On Ryan’s birthday (which was also Epiphany), I finally made the tenderloin that was supposed to be the star of our fancy Christmas dinner, plus s’mores pie for dessert:
Yesterday, I finally got around to the turkey dinner we were supposed to have on New Year’s Day. We also tried a new recipe for replica Starbucks’ cranberry bliss bars for dessert. I haven’t had the original, but Bunny tells me these are even better, because they don’t have that mass-produced flavor!
Before my back injury, we spent a few days baking our favorite Christmas cookies (and I put together a Bunter Teller!):
And we did eventually get around to the sugar cookies (not the gingerbread, though…we just ran out of time, but at least we had lots of other gingerbread desserts!):
I made kinderpunsch, wassail several times (not pictured), and eggnog over the course of the holiday weeks:
And then there were lots of other festive treats spread through the holiday season, from the weekend before Thanksgiving when we made soft pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to the Valentine’s Day Funfetti Bunny made for us before she went back to school (and also my first attempt at Dampfnudeln, which were amazing!):
By my count, we ended up short one fancy meal, because normally the tenderloin wouldn’t have been available for Ryan’s birthday dinner. We were also short the gingerbread cookies and the cannoli that I had hoped to make for New Year’s Day, since I simply didn’t have the strength or energy to do much the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s. It certainly wasn’t my best effort at holiday food, but at least I hit all the highlights, right?
