Anne's Kitchen What's cooking?!

It’s the 1st of December and the countdown to Christmas has officially begun! No more excuses, dust off your festive baking gear and let the fun begin!

Since I’m still full of energy and motivation at this point, I always kick off the festive season with a massive Stollen baking session. Stollen is one of my favourite Christmas treats. The crumbly texture of this fruit-bread, mixed with rum-soaked fruit and sweet marzipan is hard to beat. My mum used to make a mean Stollen every year, spending hours in the kitchen whilst the dough slowly rose and finally released its great scents in the oven.

Now don’t be fooled: making Stollen is a proper committment! No time for last-minute coffees in town or dashing out to meet some friends. If you decide to make a Stollen, you need to stick with it till it’s done! And it does take a loooong time. But hell, it’s worth it!

You need to be organized, thorough and patient. All good virtues, so go with it! Start a day in advance, by soaking the dried fruit in rum. Then, on the next day it’s an endless sequence of kneading and resting, kneading and resting, kneading and resting. You get the gist.

But don’t get carried away! I was so fascinated by kneading the dough with my handmixer that I just went on and on… until… *Pow* – my handixer decided it had had enough! Dead! Broken! Surrendered! So I just threw it to the side, pulled back my sleeves and continued kneading with my hands. So much fun! Once you’ve got the kneading part done you need to wait and wait (this is when I get tempted to make mulled wine and pass the time by sipping hot festive drinks)… Finally, once the Stollen has risen over and over again, it’s time to bake the thing for a full hour. More waiting. And then, just when you think you’re done, there’s more work! The hot Stollen needs to be brushed with melted butter and dusted with icing sugar. Phew!

So why go through all this sweat and pain? Why not simply buy the stuff they sell in the shops? Because this one is full of love and hard labour, and trust me, once you tasted Anne’s Stollen you’ll never look back! It truly is the most amazing piece of Stollen you’ll ever eat, if I may say so myself… Enjoy! ★

Continue for recipe →

A week in Luxembourg is normally dominated by returning to good old routines: going for a stroll in town, catching up with my friends at Coffee Lounge, going for a glass of wine at Inter, followed by a ‘mini’ (a glass of beer) at Urban or Tram. Days at home are all about family, friends and simple relaxing. Food is of course always part of the several aspects of home, but never in the way it was this time!

You can’t imagine how surprised I was when I found out the “Culinary World Cup” was taking place in Luxembourg – of all places, they chose our little corner of the world to host this event…

55 teams from around the world were taking part in this year’s competition (which is held every 4 years), showing off their intricate cooking skills and trying to impress the judges and visitors with stunning visual creations. This is not your average food fair, this is Micheling-style cooking! Fabulous!

On the day we visited you could watch Israel, Korea, Italy and two more countries working away in their little show kitchens. It was a bit like being in a zoo, with chefs behind glass performing tricks to wow the crowds. Pretty weird if you ask me, but fascinating!

But it got weirder! Just a stone’s throw from the chef’s zoo, there was a ‘culinary walk’…

It looked like a healthy version of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory – all fruit and veg with the odd nut finding its way into the food baskets. Totally random! Were it not for being on a food fair I’d have suspected some kind of new-wave artist having a joke! At least this tacky attraction got kids gaping – probably in awe of this oversized fruit and veg plate…

There was far much going on, but by the time we passed the Luxembourgish wine makers’ corner – in which you bought a champagne glass for 5€ and then could get it refilled at each of the 40 odd stalls – I deemed it better not to point and shoot anymore… Anyway, I shall leave you with a bit of Luxembourgish: “This is the taste of Luxembourg”.

By the way, for those who were wondering: the team from Singapore won the competition. Read more here.

It’s mid November and by now I don’t see any reason why I should hold off any longer from indulging in pre-Christmas activities!

Let the festive baking begin!

I can’t wait to bake all those delicious treats that make this season so amazing: from cinnamon stars and Lebkuchen to mince pies and my legendary Stollen (watch this space!). Joy is upon us!

Every year I make these classics, but I also try and expand my repertoire. So when this month’s Delicious magazine arrived in the post I got very excited. The whole issue is dedicated to Christmas food, and I’ve bookmarked many pages with post-it notes. I always find it quite tough to decide what to make first from my cookery magazines, everything looks just too tempting and good. In the end I often decide to start with the one recipe that enables me to push my culinary skills.

So this time it had to be these festive Portuguese custard tarts.

Portuguese custard tarts had been on my “to-make” list for a long time. I just love these flaky pastry cases filled with oozing custard goodness! To make them festive, this recipe uses a filling of mincemeat.

“Mincemeat?!” I hear many people think! Yes, mincemeat. It has nothing to do with minced meat. At all. This über British Christmas staple is made of a mix of currants, nuts, apple, alcohol and spices. Just lovely. It is the traditional filling for Mince Pies – those xmas shortcrust tarts that invade Britain during the festive season.

If you can’t get hold of mincemeat in your country you can either make it yourself (here’s a recipe that looks good to me) or if you don’t really like currants, why not just add some cinnamon and nutmeg into the custard?! That should give it some festive flavour too.

As for the custard- don’t be scared! Making custard is super easy! I’d never made it before and I was extremely surprised to find out how astonishingly simple it is! Just mix all your ingredients over a bain marie, stir for a few minutes et voilà: you get a lovely vanilla custard, which is miles better than any store-bought version. Come on, give it a try! And if you have any excess custard, you can just eat it with a spoon of mincemeat – pure indulgence! ★

Continue for recipe →