Skip to main content

Christmas Countdown 21 .... St Nicholas' Eve Feast

from : http://baking-jds.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/spectacular-spicy-speculaas.html


Today's and tomorrow's Christmas food countdown are both about the celebration of St Nicholas' Day (6 December) - mostly celebrated in Europe - the Netherlands, Germany, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland...  For example, in the Netherlands St. Nicholas is celebrated on the 5th, the eve of the day, by sharing candies (thrown in the door), chocolate initial letters, small gifts, and riddles. Dutch children leave carrots and hay in their shoes for the saint's horse, hoping St. Nicholas will exchange them for small gifts. Simple gift-giving in early Advent  helps preserve a Christmas Day focus on the Christ Child. ( information from http://www.stnicholascenter.org/) 


St Nicholas Eve (5th December) is a time for family feasts. The foods include:
    • Boiled chestnuts served with salt and butter;
    • Hot punch;
    • Milk chocolate letter of your first initial;
    • Spicy ginger cookies called "speculaas koekjes" made in the shape of a windmill or of St Nicholas.
While our family have not had a tradition of celebrating St Nicholas Day, the special food has not been part of our Christmas menu, but speculaas cookies have often  been a favourite in our family and I must admit this is how we know them ... straight from the shelves of the supermarket.... 
However, if you would like to try these spicy treats yourself today for tonight's St Nicholas" Eve feast, here is the link to a recipe by Martha Stewart.  Although, St Nicholas' speculaas cookies are usually the shape of windmills,, Dutch children or St Nicholas himself, you don't have to have a fancy mould to make them, but  make sure you have the cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves  and cardamon .... 
from http://thewellseasonedcook.blogspot.com.au/2007/09/curiouser-and-curiouser-speculaas.html

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading my blog and please share your thoughts about my blog post by leaving a comment.Your comment won't appear immediately as comments are verified before publication in an effort to reduce the amount of spam appearing. Anonymous comments will not be published.

Popular posts from this blog

Countdown to Christmas 15 - Diamonds Forever!

How much would you pay for a Christmas  fruitcake?  The world's most expensive fruit cake has been estimated at $1.65 million. Yesterday, I wrote about the less than positive term "Christmas cake as it is applied to unmarried women, so again it amazed me that  in Tokyo, this most exquisite and expensive Christmas cake was created. It took six months to design and another full month to construct. The beautiful cake is fully edible ... that is except for the 223  real diamonds  used as decoration. This cake was part of an exhibition called Diamonds: Nature's Miracle  and was one of 16 exhibits showcasing creative ways with diamonds . Apparently, the cake was auctioned, fetching $1.65 million US. While there have been other very expensive diamond encrusted cakes since this one in 2005 with estimated values of up to $75 million, this Japanese designed cake was the forerunner of the extravagant diamond studded wedding cakes in the higher price r...
Post a Comment
Read more

#the100dayproject : Inspiring Women Days 1 - 4

#The100DayProject is a *free* global art project that takes place online 🎨 E very year, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of creating. Anyone can participate . ​The idea is simple: choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and document and share the process online. 2026 is my 8th year of participating. I have stitched daily observations, painted my egg cup collection, collaged postcards and envelopes, written poems, explored colour palettes .... this year I am researching, sketching and stitching 100 inspiring women. Fortunately I purchased a piece of beautiful linen, with preprinted outlines of 100 women ... just one issue - the figures are tiny (height 6cm /2.5 ins) My first week started tentatively ... I thought I would start with Empress Wu, after whom I named my creative activity. This is when I discovered how difficult it is to applique and stitch on these very small figures - I used tweezers to put pieces of fabric down, tried t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid Man and Book Print

  This is my tag for the current theme at Tag Tuesday - Book Print. I like using text as a background for tags and today, I reduced one of my recent  line drawings and printed it on a small book page .... as you can see,  the book's chapter is entitled "Of Holy Living and Dying ( from The Book of Books) .  I thought this was appropriate as this 'Covid man' drawing depicts Nature happily thriving while man appears to be "unravelling " at the edges of body and mind...  Original drawing - Wilma Simmons   Silk screen print on fabric  : Wilma Simmons  Silk screen print on paper : Wilma Simmons  And here are some other tags on book print backgrounds - these are free motion stitched "Nature" portraits done earlier in the year.  
13 comments
Read more