The season of eating is fast approaching and soon many of us will need to lie on our backs in order to zip up our stretch denim jeans with the hook of a coat hanger so that we can squeeze into the pair that fitted the whole year.  Every morning we’ll start a new diet and by sundown we’ll console ourselves with the thought that we actually meant to start the next day; our men will do exactly the same thing but they usually start after a particularly trying session at the gym and we’ll all lie to one another and agree that it’s really just a matter of fitness or health or an early new year’s resolution – anything but the weight!

The Christians get an early start and Advent* begins this Sunday, the  29^{th of November– it’s a special time for adults and children all over the world and while children make wreaths from evergreen branches in the next week, parents start the Christmas preparations. They celebrate the coming of the baby that came to be known to the world as Jesus – the first Advent is the first day of the Western liturgical year and commences on the first Advent Sunday. Eastern churches begin their year on the 1st September and they call their equivalent of the Advent, the Nativity Fast but it both the length and the practices differ. German Lutheran’s introduced the concept of an Advent calendar which will start on the fourth Sunday before the 25th of December. Christians believe that this season commemorates both the original waiting of the Hebrews for the birth of their Messiah and also the wait for the 2nd coming of Christ.}

CHRISTMAS BISCOTTI

Ingredients

• 350g plain flour plus extra for rolling
• 250 g golden caster sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp allspice
• 3 eggs , beaten
• 1 orange, coarsely grated zest
• 85g seedless raisins
• 85g dried cranberries
• 50g blanched almonds
• 50g shelled pistachios

Method

• Heat oven to 180 C and cover and line 2 baking sheets with baking paper.
• Put the flour, the baking powder, the spices and the sugar into a large bowl and mix well.
• Stir in the eggs and zest until the mixture starts forming clumps and then bring the dough together with your hands – it will seem dry at first but keep kneading until no floury bits remain.
• Add the fruit and nuts and knead and work them in until everything is evenly distributed (take a bit of care here because nothing is as horrible as a biscotti with all the interesting bits at one end of the biscuit and the other end void of excitement.)
• Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 4 pieces and then, with your hands covered in flour, roll each piece into a sausage about 30cm long.
• Put  2 sausages  on each tray and make sure that they are well spaced apart.
• Bake them for 25-30 minutes until the dough has risen and spread out and feels firm – it must still be pale in colour.
• Take them out of the oven and put them on a wire rack for a few minutes until they are cool enough to touch.
• Turn the oven down to 140 C.
• Using a bread knife, cut the sausages into slices about 1cm thick on the diagonal and lay these slices flat on the baking sheets.
• The biscuits can be cooled and frozen flat on the sheet now and then bagged and frozen for up to 2 months but if you want them now, bake them for another 15 minutes (20 minutes if just taken them out of the freezer), turn them over and  then bake again for another 15 minutes until they are dry and golden in colour.
• Allow them to cool on a wire rack and store them in an airtight tin, cellophane bags or boxes  – they’ll last for a month.

THE WREATH

The lighting of the four candles (one each Sunday) signifies the coming of the light into the world, the wreath represents eternal life because it’s evergreen and the seedpods, the nuts and the pinecones signify the symbol of resurrection.

THE COLOUR PURPLE

In the olden days, the colour purple was used for the hangings around the church and sometimes even in the tabernacle but nowadays blue is more often – especially in the Anglican and Lutheran churches. The use of blue as a liturgical colour can be traced back to the Swedish Church and the medieval Sarum Rite.  On the 3^rd Sunday (aka Gaudete Sunday) a rose coloured candle is used to signify a shift in the mood to one of rejoicing. So, on the first Sunday one candle is lit, on the second one two candles are lit, on the third Sunday two plus one purple one and all the candles are lit on the fourth Sunday.

EGG NOG WITH A DIFFERENCE

Ingredients

• 1140 ml whole milk
• 6 fresh organic eggs
• 50g caster sugar
• 1 large vanilla pod, split
• 20 fresh cherries, destoned and halved
• 200ml cognac
• Good unsweetened cocoa powder for dusting

Method

• Put the milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla pod into a pot and heat gently, without boiling, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon – never stop stirring
• To serve, scatter the cherries in the bottom of each serving glass and divide the brandy between the glasses and pour the egg nog over it – dust with cocoa powder and serve.
• The egg nog can be chilled at this stage or served hot.

Around the world many different fascinating traditions existed but many are now extinct, like the English custom that saw poor women carried two Advent dolls that represented Jesus and the Holy Mother Mary with them. Everyone that was allowed to look at the dolls had to pay a halfpenny and everyone that didn’t have a chance to look at the doll would have bad luck in the year to come. In Normandy child labour was the order of the day and farmers sent children under the age of 12 running through their orchards and their fields armed with torches so that they could set light to the bundles of straw – apparently this would drive out anything that could damage the crop – one wonders how much damage was done along the way. Today, with churches being what they are, the traditions vary – the Catholics call their last Sunday of Advent, the Feast of Christ King, the Anglicans have a more relaxed name and call it Stir-up Sunday and the Lutherans and some other protestant churches refer to it as the Reign of Christ. This year Advent falls on the Sunday before St. Nicholas which is on the 6th of December – thus the next recipe is quite suitable.

FILLED SPECULAAS

In Holland, long ago, these cookies were given as gifts during this period and speculaas cookies were given as gifts during the time of St Nicholas, known as Sinterklaas to the Dutch.  Young men would carve an image of what they did as a profession on a piece of wood and then the carving would be used as a  mould when baking these cookies so that a mirror image (latin for mirror is speculum) of the carving would appear on the cookie. I have a little bit of problem believing that the young men baked these cookies, so I assume it was their carving and their mothers’ baking. They would give the cookies to the father of the girls they wanted to marry – a few days later they would go back to find out their fate and if she had eaten them, the father had agreed to the match and if not – that was it. No wedding.  This recipe originated on Radio Nederland Wereldomroep and it’s definitely one to try!

Ingredients

• 200g flour (plus extra to flour the rolling pin and rolling surface)
• 125g dark brown sugar
• 2 tbsp speculaas spices, recipe below
• 150g cold butter
• 2 tbsp of milk
• 2 eggs
• 300g almond paste (amandelspijs or marzipan)
• 55g sliced almonds to garnish

Method

• Sift together the flour, the brown sugar, the speculaaskruiden and the salt – make sure that all lumps are pushed through the sieve – you need alight flour.
• Cut the butter into the flour mixture with two knives  until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs and add the milk.
• The next step is important because you need cold hands: run your hands under cold water until they are icy and then dry them and knead the dough into a smooth ball, wrapping the ball in plastic wrap and refrigerating for at least an hour.
• In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs well with 1 tbsp water.
• Crumble the almond paste into another bowl and add half of it to the whisked egg – stir the egg mixture until it’s quite smooth.
• Heat the oven 175 C and make sure the rack is in the middle of the oven.
• Cover the baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Flour your work surface and rolling pin.
• Divide the dough into two equal pieces and roll each piece to approximately 15 x 30 cm.
• Place one sheet of dough on the baking sheet.
• Spread the remaining almond paste over the dough with wet hands or flat-edged knife, leaving the edge bare.
• Lay the second sheet of dough over the first and press the edges together firmly.
• Brush the top with the egg mixture and decorate with sliced almonds (pressing slightly into the dough so they will stick).
• Bake the filled speculaas for 40-45 minutes or until the almonds on top are golden brown.
• Remove the baking sheet from the oven and let cool.

SPECULAAS SPICE MIXTURE

• 20g cinnamon
• 10g ground nutmeg
• 5g ground cloves
• ¼ tsp ground cardamom
• ¼ tsp ground ginger