St. Lucia

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!

Santa Lucia Day 2025

Happy Santa Lucia Day!

As always, we started our day with coffee and lussekattes:

A real highlight of the day was going to Christmas Traditions in St. Charles, MO, and greeting Santa Lucia on her day!

We had our traditional dinner of potato pancakes and kielbasa:

And cranberry fluff topped with sugared cranberries for dessert:

The commemoration days that fall during the season of Advent are some of my favorites of the whole year!

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!)

Luciamorgon

Happy Santa Lucia Day!

As always, we started the day with lussekattes, served by our little Lucia.

We had stroganoff for dinner again this year. I’m not really sure why, but it makes for a very nice dinner on Santa Lucia Day.

For dessert, I made a cranberry cake with cream cheese frosting. This is the third year in a row I’ve made a cranberry cake for Santa Lucia Day (I really like the way the red fruit against white frosting reflects the colors of the holiday), so I guess it’s a family tradition now. I’ve never made the same cake twice, though!

This was another nice Advent day!

Santa Lucia Day 2021

Today is one of my favorite days of the year…Santa Lucia Day! Chickadee started the morning as our little Lucia, serving lussekattes to the family:

I thought about making Swedish meatballs for dinner, but I decided stroganoff would be less putzy. I served it over egg noodles, with sides of pickled beets and smoked salmon, which seemed pretty Scandinavian to me:

For dessert, I made Molly Yeh’s Bløtkake with sugared cranberries:

It was nice to have a reason to celebrate at the beginning of finals week!

Santa Lucia Day 2020

Our Santa Lucia Day celebration was a little different this year, but for once, it wasn’t because of COVID-19. Because the commemoration date fell on Sunday this year, we decided to wait until after church for our traditional lussekattes, and only Chickadee dressed up. It was very nice to get to go to church today, though, and since it’s Sunday, I decided to add a special dessert, an orange-cranberry cake, to the menu as well.

Happy Santa Lucia Day!

Lucia Morning in Belleville

Today is one of my favorite days in Advent…St. Lucia Day! We were up bright and early, and the girls donned their crowns and handed out our breakfast of lussekattes, one of my favorite things to bake at this time of year!

A Markel Family Santa Lucia Day

Santa Lucia Day is one of my favorite holidays! I love planning and preparing, especially when it comes to making the Lussekattes and setting up the night before:

The girls all still love dressing up, and while it may not be traditional, they all dress as Santa Lucia. This was the fifth year using the crowns I made for them!

We even had a Swedish dinner! I’m so glad St. Louis has an IKEA now, because it made planning our meal so much easier. We had Swedish meatballs with gravy, egg noodles, lingonberry juice, and for dessert, Swedish sandwich cookies, plus Dala Horse and Sour Viking candies:

We also read our favorite Santa Lucia stories today. It’s such a lovely holiday in the lead-up to Christmas, and one I look forward to all year long!