T'is the season!

While I was still getting on with my ovenly escapades, New York City was already unleashing its own holiday spirit. In a matter of weeks the whole city transformed, and I'm honestly bummed that this is a once-per-year-thing. Because it looks absolutely stunning!

I now regret not taking the time to really explore all the beautifully decorated places, but I thouroughly enjoyed what I did see, which was plenty.

Bram and I took a trip to the local park together to take the picture for our Christmas card, two young ladies were walking their dogs and offered to take a picture of us, so we gladly let them (I'll say it again, New Yorkers really are a lot friendlier than most of the media I grew up with gives them credit for)

Here's all the other festive scenes I came across;

The Nativity scene at St. Patrick's Cathedral (which is still very much being renovated) with an as of yet empty manger. Maria doesn't look nine months pregnant though, which makes the whole story all the more suspicious if you ask me :P

Choir practice sounded nice, too bad we didn't get to hear the organ, I promised myself to go to a concert at least once.

The giant tree at Rockefeller Center

Huge balls.

Braving the Christmas Crowds at Times Square...

Pretty much every avenue is filled with these stands selling Christmas trees. It smells fantastic too!

And of course there's a happy little tree in the lobby of our apartment building as well.

We even managed to get photobombed. Apart from being generally friendly, New Yorkers are also hilarious.

Now we're counting the days until we get to fly home again. We've found a suitable Kitty-sitter so we're good to go! It will be nice to see everyone again! (of course we have lots to do while we're in the Netherlands, because moving to the other side of the world is hard work...)

Merry Christmas everyone, and a happy new year!

Spice up your life!

Because we had to miss Sinterklaas at the beginning of December, I got a little nostalgic and it promptly triggered my annual craving for kruidnoten. Next, Bram got a serious hankering for gevulde speculaas. Unfortunately, these delicacies were not to be found anywhere in New York, so I needed to improvise. I turned to the expertise of the internet and looked up the recipes. They all called for speculaaskruiden, which aren't exactly overabundant in these regions either. They're very much like pumpkin spices but not exactly the same so I needed to look up the recipe for that as well.

This caused a substantial delay in my baking plans because I had to order some ingredients online that were difficult to come by (or ridiculously expensive in grocery stores).

But one week later I finally had all my ingredients and I could start the experiments! Here's a somewhat complete step-by-step for anyone who wants to get their hands dirty.

Speculaaskruiden! 

I used;

• 40 gr Cinnamon (= 8/8)
• 10 gr Nutmeg (= 2/8)
• 5 gr Allspice (= 1/8)
• 5 gr Cardamom (= 1/8)
• 5 gr White pepper (= 1/8)
• 5 gr Coriander (= 1/8)
• 5 gr Ginger powder (= 1/8)

(All of these need to be ground)

Another obstacle was the imperial system that is commonly used here. All the recipes I found were measured in metric units. This required more internet-expertise, a bit of printing and some serious sellotaping.

But now I'm all set for any future baking adventures!

The kruidnoten were relatively simple, as long as you use the exact ingredients mentioned in the recipe (being a complete baking newb this was surprisingly hard to do, but I got it down in the end) 

I used this recipe (it's in Dutch)

The first batch didn't come out quite as planned. They were pretty much inedible so we had to throw them out...

But I saw my failure as a valuable lesson and had high hopes for the second batch.

Success!

While we were busy eating these, I got started on the next experiment. Which was the gevulde speculaas. The almond paste required for this recipe is readily available in the U.S. but I was beginning to like the experimenting and decided to make it from scratch.

I got some almonds, boiled them until they looked like this;

and peeled off the skin that was now a lot easier to remove. Still a lot of work for a relatively small amount of almonds.

But persistence pays off! Now, I didn't have a food processor nor a nut grinder. I did, however, have a garlic press. So yay! More painstaking manual labor for me!

Almonds are a lot tougher than garlic, but really, who needs a gripmaster when you can make ground almonds instead?

Just add sugar (it's 50% almonds, 50% sugar)

...then add an egg and a tiny bit of lemon juice...

Mix it, put it in a container and let it sit for pretty much a week.

One week later, I could finally start baking again!

I used the same recipe I used for the kruidnoten and spread the dough out evenly. Then I smeared the almond paste on top of that.

I mixed in another half egg to make it more smooth

Next comes the second layer. This method worked like a charm!

Then pressed the edges firmly together

Done! Well, kind of..

After taking it out of the oven I realized I didn't leave it in there long enough, so the bottom turned out soggy. That didn't stop us from eating the whole thing anyway, and liking it! It also gives me a good excuse to try this recipe again! So I'll call it a success. ;)