The Lorelei Calls

HAPPY sixth birthday Emma! We had great fun preparing for her mermaid party - designing a menu, painting underwatery paintings to hang up, planning activities and decorating with strips of blue and purple crepe paper, which waved delightfully when the ceiling fan was turned on.

On the big day, it was hard to contain their excitement. Six little girls and one little brother made shell necklaces, played musical mermaid rocks then sat on their rocks for a tea of seaweed, kale chips, tuna crackers and "rainbow fish" cake. Outside, water beads awaited discovery in the paddling pool, and finally a treasure hunt for a take-home mini treasure chest of sparkling gems. The theme continued until her actual birthday two days later when Emma received her present from Mama - a beautiful mermaid of her own!

Happy Mother's Day

HOW nice to feel appreciated! I had the opportunity to attend a day-long class on Mother's Day while the children enjoyed a day of daddy time. On my return I was greeted with a fabulous cake which they had baked together. Yum!

Let The Baking Begin!

IN honour of Saint Nicholas, the beginning of December saw us making lebkuchen, German spice biscuits. Foregoing the traditional shape of a man with a staff, we opted instead for easier but just-as-tasty shapes, using Christmas cookie cutters. By the end of the day, wonderful aromas of cinnamon and nutmeg filled the house and the children raced to eat their dinner so they could eat some of their creations for dessert. (The biscuits didn't stay around long enough to be iced... picture credit goes to www.molif.com who must use the same set of cookie cutters :-)

The next project for our Christmas bakery was mince pies. Finally using a real mince pie tray courtesy of my mum, instead of the deep muffin trays, the pies turned out better than years past. I've had a bit of trouble explaining exactly what mincemeat is - first that it contains no meat, but that it does contain suet. Try portraying suet as a delicious ingredient when most people in your country know it only as bird food. Mincemeat actually is, of course, dried fruits mixed with spices and sometimes alcohol. Mince pies are a traditional pastry found everywhere in England at Christmas time - you could even call it a national obsession. See www.mincepieclub.co.uk if you don't believe me.

Happy Birthday!

HAPPY 5th birthday Emma and happy 2nd birthday Alexander! We celebrated Emma's birthday with a few friends at a nature center, and Alexander's at home with a special grillout in the back garden.


Here we are at Emma's birthday breakfast, and baking Alexander's cake. I felt really prepared as I had found some nice recipes for healthier-but-not-too-healthy birthday cake, and printed them out the night before. So much for prepared...we were just getting ready to bake when I found we had no eggs left, so we tried out an eggless recipe instead. It worked out ok but I am resigned to the fact that I will never win any baking awards :-)

Hot Cross Buns

IT wouldn't be Easter without hot cross buns, and it's so much more fun to bake with a friend.

Gingerbread Baby

AFTER reading The Gingerbread Baby, of course we had to make some gingerbread! Just as we were thinking about this, a package arrived from our German grandparents with a gingerbread house to make and decorate! This kept Emma and Grandma busy for quite some time.

A little bit of food chemistry/domestic know-how: gingerbread goes hard very quickly when left out uncovered; however it can be softened by putting it inside a tin with a moist cake such as Christmas cake!

Christmas Baking

MMH the smell of baking in the house! Officially, Tuesday is baking day in our house, but we've had a lot of Tuesdays recently to get everything made. We've also had fun mixing traditions. No self-respecting English household would celebrate Christmas without mince pies. Using a muffin pan, these turned out a little deep. Then there was the Christmas cake. That was a first for us. Again, we didn't have the right sized pan, so that turned out a little flat. Moving on to America we baked dozens and dozens of snickerdoodles for gifts. They were placed a little too close to one another on the tray so turned out a little too - erm - joined together. By the time we got to Germany it was two days before Christmas so we gave up and bought Lebkuchen at the shops. They were yummy, but they didn't make the house smell delicious.

Hot Cross Buns

OUR Easter preparations had mixed success. For Palm Sunday, we made a 'palm' cross with a long stem of tiger grass from our garden. It was a bit brittle, but worked out okay after soaking in water.

Dyeing eggs should have been easy. Following advice from several sources, we used celery seed and turmeric for yellow, blueberries for blue and spinach for green, but despite the addition of vinegar, the colours did not take. The water was pretty though.

Hot cross buns for Good Friday were interesting. They are one of those things we've always bought so it's never really occured to me that they could be homemade, but we decided to try our hand at baking them. Several recipes I found called for an icing cross on the top, which is not how I've ever eaten them. But we stuck to the recipe and did this. Just as well since the buns didn't rise and the icing was really the only redeeming feature.

Oh well, it was more about the activity than the result, and now we have a whole year to practice before needing these skills again.

Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar

FOR the last few days we've been preparing for Epiphany, or the Coming of the Magi. We've baked star biscuits, made a large star to carry and crowns to wear, made a hanging star for our nature table and learned a new song. Most of all we've practised being Sternsinger to surprise Papa when he came home from work this evening.

The practice of Sternsinger, or Star Singers, goes back to the sixteenth century and is a tradition in German-speaking countries. Church members, usually children, dressed as the three kings go from door to door singing and collecting money for the poor. 20*C+M+B+09 is written in chalk on the outside of the door. The star represents the star of Bethlehem, and the three crosses for the holy trinity. C, M and B have traditionally been understood to stand for Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, however, according to the Church it stands for "Christus Mansionem Benedictat" (Christ bless this home). The numbers at the beginning and end of the blessing represent the year.










Sternsingerlied from Austria
(own translation)

From far beyond the eastern sky three travelling Kings are we,
We've come from mountains far away and journeyed over the sea.

A child lies in the manger, obedient and good.
Most wonderful on Earth is he, a halo o'er his head.

We've prayed to him and offered gifts and made our sacrifice.
And now we bid a fond farewell and leave this very night.

Who Needs a Pencil?

RESOURCEFUL to the last, Emma found something to do while waiting for me to shape dough into balls for her to place on the baking tray.

"My finger like a pencil Mama. My no need a pencil."

Loaves of Revelation

WE baked bread and it was a success! I had never done this before, but have wanted to for so long. I would go back and forth between being super-enthusiastic about my new 'project' (wanting to go out and buy a milling machine, for example, so that I could mill my own flour), then overcome with doubt and deciding I should start small with a packet mix of the 'just add water' variety. Then finally yesterday I managed to get past the overthinking and just made it. A little background for those to whom bread baking is no big deal: I have always thought my cooking skills to be quite good, but baking was just never my thing and even homemade cookies frequently end up being donated to the birds. I admit, I have a problem following recipes.

Well the actual act of baking was not especially eventful; Emma had fun transforming Basil into a dalmation by 'raining' on him with handfuls of flour; I was trying to put some elbow grease into kneading the dough - not very easy with a slumbering little bundle suspended on your front in a sling. But when it was finally baked, I even procrastinated cutting into the loaf to see how it turned out. (Ever done that with a letter that you know contains exam or interview results?) When I finally did, half a day later, I was amazed to find that not only was it fully cooked inside, it held up to being sliced thinly, was not too heavy and even tasted good! You can't imagine how clever I felt! Emma and I high-fived all through our bread and cheese lunch.

I do realize this small feat is not exactly comparable to Neil Armstrong's steps on the moon, but to me it was! And that led me to a revelation. Emma likes to dress and undress and redress her dolls in Alexander's clothes oh, maybe thirty times each day. That's great except she can't fasten the snaps (poppers). So guess who gets this job (thirty times each day)? Today she came running to me announcing ecstatically: "I did it up Mama all by myself!" My first instinct was "Thank heavens! About time!" Then I remembered that I baked bread all by myself, and shared her moment of joy.