Chrissie Spice
Elisenlebkuchen
Morning, here we are at 28.
On Sunday we were blessed with bright Winter sunshine and I spent a delightful day dishing out all the wholesome treats to go with delicious Bratton Seymour cider, was nice to see so many people including some lovely substack readers.
Otherwise I’ve been trying to get Christmas cakes finished. I do really enjoy my Chrissie cakes and it’s brilliant how popular they are. Every year I do slightly more so this time I’m making 40, it might not sound like very many but a lot of work goes into them and I get everyone to help out. The fruit starts soaking in brandy in October: this includes all my own candied peel, we’re talking blood orange, citron, pomelo, grapefruit, and kumquat. We had a slight delay this year as we were waiting on the fancy prune d’agen to arrive from France. I started the baking in November, I have to do this 10 at a time as that’s all the tins I have and how many fit in the oven. Then my oven decides to have a hissy fit and completely broke!
As if that was not enough, I’ve used the last of my candied peel in the cake mixes so I need to make more to go on top of the cakes. Annoyingly, that meant I had to wait another week for citrus to be available and delicious. Now I’m madly candying to have my usual candied peel cake decor. All my cakes are now baked and I’m tenderly feeding them more brandy, next up is the marzipaning which may be my least favourite part.
I’m old now so my wrists feel the ache after rolling for hours and I have to make sure to do a super thin layer as if they are too fat they won’t fit in our wonderful Michael Marriott ‘Peace is not just for Christmas’ tins. Next week I’ll start making the swishy royal icing and get creative with completing the decorations which are all individual and unique!
So you see it’s a real labour of festive love, but they will be ready to buy from Leila’s Wednesday 10th December!
To be completely honest with you Christmas is not my thing I’m an Easter gal at heart! I hate the consumerism and greed side of it, the amount of wastage is shocking. Plus if you’ve ever worked in hospitality it’s one of our busiest months, the whole rest of the world having endless Christmas parties that someone has to cater for!
So yes I’m a bit of a grinch, although I do enjoy the actual bit of Christmas Day and being with family. My mind is always brimming with Chrissy baking ideas, but there’s never enough time to make them happen. But this year I’m making sure to get some new bakes in for the substack, so into the Elisenlebkuchen we go.
German Christmas markets started in the Middle Ages, although at that point they were more for stocking up with meat and winter supplies. This evolved and became more festive and running for the whole of December with the addition of toys and crafts, sweet treats and hot food and drinks like bratwurst and apfelwein. This is where you will definitely catch sight of Lebkuchen.
This often garishly decorated biscuit with colourful icing and writing came about in the 13th century and were made by monks, using lots of warming spices and sweetened with honey from the monastery’s apiaries. They are often quite soft which gives quite stale biscuit vibes so it’s never been a favourite for me. But then I found out about the Elisenlebkuchen which now by law must contain less than 10% flour and have at least 25% nut content. I’m a big nut enthusiast and liked the thought of the added texture. The more nuts and less flour used was a boasting point of bakers. It’s quite a wet dough so the monks would bake them on communion wafers, now oblaten (which is a bit like rice paper) is used but I didn’t have any to hand so went without and all was fine. Often found with an icing glaze or a chocolate one, I think both work well I flavour mine with orange!
