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Christmas 2019: Frankfurt German Weihnachtsmarkt
(Photos by Retiring Guy)
This December, JoAnna has spent as much time in the kitchen as a professional baker. And at the same time =, she impressively expanded her Christmas baking repertoire.
In past years, JoAnna mostly limited herself to recipes handed down from her mom and Grandma Richard. She typically started out by making a huge batch of Chex mix in a roasting pan, enough for the home front and to include in gift packages sent to her siblings. This assortment of treats also contains a variety of cookies, including a Russian tea cake very similar to the one that Mom frequently made and the only non-Richard item: the Andes-candy frosted Nittanys. She also made peanut clusters with melting chocolate, which I have always found addictive, and a variation using Golden Grahams cereal with white chocolate. Another standard is date balls rolled in either cocoa powder, coconut, or crushed walnuts.
Two years ago, JoAnna spent the fall volunteering full-time for Tony Evers’ gubernatorial campaign and the month of December positioning herself for an appointment in his administration. That left her little kitchen time for Christmas — just the basics: Chex mix, Russian tea cakes, Nittanys.
Last year we spent half of December in Germany, which limited the need to have a lot of goodies at hand. In fact, we gave Christmas pretty much of a hands-off approach in general. We placed a few Christmas decorations around the house but decided against putting up a tree.
Why go to the effort when it would be standing by its lonesome, unlit, unattended, for nearly 3 weeks? It wasn’t that big of a deal, actually, as the preparation, excitement, and anticipation of our trip to Germany more than made up for it. Not to mention the wonderful experience of the trip itself to think back during a ‘safer-in-place Covid Christmas. (The photo at the bottom of the previous page is from our first night in Germany – at the Frankfurt Christmas market in the historic quarter of the city. The experience got our trip off to a magical start.)
This year JoAnna was determined to make Christmas an extra special time.
“I think we should put more lights up outside,” she suggested.
And so we purchased an additional string of icicle lights and a handful of floodlights (2 green, 2 red), as well as a number of seasonal lawn displays. (No baby Jesus in a manger, just a few colorful yard signs with greetings of holiday cheer.) We also purchased an artificial green, ‘table-top’ tree for the garden window in the kitchen. The white one that used to claim this space each December has now been relegated to the family room. (The cup on the
pull-out shelf of my desk is a serving of Glühwein – hot, mulled red wine, a German Christmas market tradition in which we frequently participated during our visit. Forfeiting our deposits, we kept the cups as souvenirs, with the idea that they’d get some use this Christmas season.)
On the baking side of things, JoAnna posted a message on NextDoor, a social media app connecting neighborhoods, offering to Christmas cookies, composing her message so that it targeted people too busy to do their own baking. She received about 10 responses. As a result, she searched baking websites for new recipes to add to her standards. Two of her selections instantly became holiday favorites for me: Chocolate Crinkles (cookie dough rolled in powdered sugar before baking) and an oatmeal cookie with dried cranberries, walnuts, and white chocolate. Each order included a variety of 4 dozen cookies packaged in a disposable aluminum foil pan. In most cases, the pans were placed on a TV tray on our front stoop for contactless pick-up. For those who offered to pay, JoAnna encouraged a donation to the Middleton Outreach Ministry food pantry. With Covid severely limiting her volunteer options outside of the house, JoAnna decided to put her baking skills to good use as a way to brighten other people’s Christmas.
With more time for Christmas meal planning, JoAnna also brightened our holiday table. Our Christmas Eve meal featured a longtime standard, toutiere (French-Canadian meat pie) and a new dessert entree (Bûche de Noël).
My first taste of toutiere took place in December 1984. (JoAnna and her family have always pronounced it ‘toot-kay’, the ‘toot’ pronounced like the first syllable of ‘tootsie’.) This savory pie is prepared with two basic ingredients — ground pork and fresh bread crumbs — along with garlic, salt, and pepper and then baked in a lard pie crust. The lard gives the crust a crisp, flaky texture and provides the perfect complement to the moist meat mixture. I think I might have had seconds and thirds in that first Christmas visit to Two Rivers.
When asked for the recipe, JoAnna’s standard response is to say she doesn’t use one. She learned how to make toutiere from her beloved Grandma Richard, who herself never used a recipe for toutiere during the majority of her nearly 70 years as a homemaker. I tell JoAnn she could simply list the ingredients and transcribe the steps she takes to make it. She’s never taken me up on the offer. It’s as if she wants to keep her grandmother’s recipe a family secret. And that is certainly her prerogative.
Bûche de Noël is a traditional French Christmas cake. Unlike toutiere, which is more French-Canadian than French, it has never been a Richard family tradition. It is a flourless chocolate cake rolled with chocolate whipped cream, shaped like a log and frosted with chocolate icing. (A member of the Death by Chocolate family.) Additionally, powdered sugar is sprinkled on it to resemble snow on a Yule log. JoAnna added the mushrooms, made with marzipan, as decorative touch. (I find them much too sweet to eat, if such a thing is possible.) The cake has a deliciously light taste but is quite filling.
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