St. Nik Breads ... Weckemaennchen. The perfect simple holiday gift of love!

St. Nikolaus Day is officially December 6th, but it's never too late to have fun making these, er, ummm, renegade versions of German holiday breads also known as Weckemaenwchen in honor of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. My friend, Renate, grew up in the Rhineland region of Germany, and she taught me to make the official version of these traditional breads, which are supposed to look like St. Nik. Somehow, they get away from us every year, and they have taken on a life of their own.
They make a nice breakfast treat or you can dry them for festive decorations. Or, if you're like me, take pictures of them and make that your holiday greeting card ... from our quirky family to yours!

Anyway, in early December, you'll find the ones that look like St. Nik lining the display windows of bakeries throughout Germany, where doting grownups buy them to give to the little ones in their lives. My friends, Jen, Cece, and Renate will take you through the steps of making them and then you'll find a recipe below. These make fabulous gifts! Have fun!!!!

First roll your dough into an oval.

Then cut the arms.

Then the legs.

 

 And then spread arms. Remember, he will puff up considerably.

 

 Snip with sisissors like Jen if you want Santa to look like a fish ....

 

 A floury Cece adds the finishing touches to her gal/guy.

This is Renate. She already loves her Weckmann.

To get raisin eyes to stick, snip a slit with sissors and scooch them in.

Risen and ready to go into the oven.

This is Renate's recipe for the St. Nik breads. Someday, I'll have to do a post about her unbelieveably wonderful recipe book she made for her family.

To make the breads:

You can use any bread recipe you like that is a firm kneadable dough without little pieces of raisins or nuts. Renate uses the traditional sweet recipe above. Jen added an egg to her batter for a Challah type dough. I use this variation:

The night before I bake, I mix up the dough and let it sit out on the counter for an hour or two before refrigerating. In the morning, you'll take it out of the fridge, take it out of the bowl, warm up the bowl by washing with hot water, and put it back in the re-buttered warm bowl to rise.

 

1 cup milk

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup sugar (you can use less, but a little helps them color nicely)

Zest of an organic lemon makes them extra fragrant

2 Tbs. soft butter

4 cups all purpose unbleached flour (and more to knead)

1 1/4 tsp. salt

2 tsp. yeast (I use instant, use more yeast if you want a faster rise)

And that's it. Combine milk, water, sugar, lemon zest and butter. Then add 4 cups flour that's been mixed with the salt and the yeast. Let the dough rest, covered with a towel 30 minutes. Knead in a Kitchen Aid about 5 minutes or on a board about 10 minutes until smooth and elastic, adding enough flour so that it holds its shape and doesn't stick. If using a mixer, add enough flour so that the dough just clears the sides and bottom of the bowl but is still soft. If you use  bread flour, you will have to knead longer to develop the gluten. Put the dough in a buttered bowl and cover with a plate or put it in a big zip lock bag, or cover it with plastic. Let it rise until doubled or refriegerate overnight. Then shape as instructed above. Best to put a piece of parchment on your baking sheet and form your St. Nik on the pan. Let the breads rise about an hour or so until puffy. Right before baking, brush with an evenly applied egg wash (an egg well beaten with a spoon of water). Bake at 350º until golden.

Holiday Open House and Winter Cooking Classes

Grab an Apron and Let's get cookin!

To Register for Classes: 

Contact Barbara at logcabincooking@gmail.com

Class size limited to 8, so don't delay!

We are located 5 miles east of Asheville in Haw Creek

Hide N' Bake: Special  Holiday Refrigerator Cookies and Savory Crackers        Wednesday, December 7th, 6:00-9:00pm $45 

"Spumoni" Chocolate, cherry, pistachio cookie dough

Still 2 spaces left!  We're making:

Brown butter pecan shortbreads (think pecan sandies)
Crunchy thin ginger snaps (my favorite)
Chocolate pistachio which can be made into spumoni cookies
Lemon cornmeal jam thumbprints with my blackberry jam
Hazelnut Linzer cookies filled with my raspberry jam
Peanut butter pillows (peanut butter cookies stuffed with peanut butter or chocolate filling)
Pinwheels and checkerboards ... chocolate, vanilla, date/walnut, cranberry, etc.
and then crackers:
  Oat crisps
  Sesame
  Aunt Mary's cheese things

Open House Holiday Party at Log Cabin Cooking & Music

December 10^th from 1:00-5:00

 Shop local for the holidays in Haw Creek! I'll have my 10 cookbooks for sale and hubby, Wayne Erbsen has a bazillion old-time and bluegrass music instruction, civil war, railroad, etc. books all at a 10 % discount. You can also pick up local honey and hand-blown glass ornaments made by our friends. Most everything is priced below $10!! There will be a live bluegrass music jam, half-hourly raffle door-prizes,and  hearth-side old-time food and beverages from my cookbooks. Bring the whole family! For directions, email me. logcabincooking@gmail.com

Rustic Farmhouse Artisan Breads 

Wednesday, January 11th 6:00-9:00 $45

Bake fabulous and easy whole grain artisan breads just like great-great-great grandma used to do. We'll use cast iron pots to bake two types of breads in your home oven that will change your life (!) The first will be an unkneaded bread that makes a dandy pizza as well as an exciting exploding cheese volcano bread. The second type of bread will be a kneaded bread that serves as an example of how to bake any bread in an iron pot. Dinner will be roasted winter veggie topped pizza, salad and wine.
You'll need a cast iron dutch oven size 3 1/2 or 5 quart or a ceramic cloche to make these breads. Enameled cast iron will do as well.
A copy of my new book, Aunt Barb's Bread Book is included.

PS Here's a cinnamon roll pan bread you can make out of the kneaded dough in case you don't have a dutch oven.

Blackout! Hearth/Campfire Cooking for Fun or Snow-storm

Saturday, January 14 10:00am-1:00pm $45

 

Campfire "forgotten" pork

Oh, you'll wish the power would go out so you can have an excuse to prepare this meal in your fireplace or campfire! A variety of live-fire techniques will be used to prepare our fireside lunch. (You can make all these dishes in your conventional range as well.) We'll roast carrots, beets, potatoes, and red onions separately in foil packets in embers to be tossed together on the plate along with a fresh arugula salad; english muffins will be cooked over coals in an iron gem pan; forgotten local pork roast glazed with cider and calvados will be slow-baked at fire's edge until crispy, and dessert will be gingerbread/apple upside-down cake baked in a dutch oven. 

Little Homey Breads and Healthy Winter Stew

Wednesday, January 25th, 6:00-9:00pm $45
 

Whole-grain graham gem recipes were in most every cookbook up until the 1930's. Yet, I'll bet you have never heard of them. They are a completely lost type of wholesome tasty American quick breads and I am bringing them back! They can be baked in 19th-century antique pans like these, if you can find them.

Or, you can bake them in your regular old muffin pans, and Lodge makes this pan which works great:

English muffins in the Lodge Drop-biscuit pan

Cheesy herbed popover

In this class, we'll be making cornbread gems (local heirloom cornmeal), thirded graham gems (local rye, wheat and corn blended with dried fruit and local sorghum syrup), and everybody's favorite, cheesy herbed popovers. To go with, we'll have a flavorful chicken pumpkin soup which is at once, hearty and light. A perky salad, glass of wine, and pear sorbet complete the feast. You'll take the leftover gems home to enjoy for breakfast! The class includes a copy of Aunt Barb's Bread Book.

Upcoming Cooking Classes

German Santa Breads

Stay tuned for January and Febuary Cooking Classes

Meanwhile, head down to the Nov. 7 post for information on this December class and open house:

Wednesday, December 7th, 6:00-9:00pm $45  
Hide N' Bake: Special  Holiday Refrigerator Cookies and Savory Crackers  

A Jiggly Wiggly Thanksgiving

This year, Wayne and I traveled to Richmond, VA for the family gathering and feast. And speaking of feast, sometimes you just have to start with dessert first. I made a couple lovely candy roaster pies with a bittersweet chocolate ganache under the pumpkin custard. And that was all fine and dandy.

I had to make those pumpkin pies because I always make the pumpkin pies, and my sister Laura usually makes her beautiful and delicious black walnut cake. But this year, she didn't make her cake because we were expecting a special guest dessert. This year, my dad's friend, David, was coming to the Thanksgiving feast and bringing something that took 6 hours to make.

That's David on the left and my dad, Leon, on the right in one of their usual deep conversations.
What dessert could take 6 hours to make? I'll tell you what. This is what.

I've done a lot of makin' fun of Jell-O in my days, and the book that contains my anti-wiggly foods rant is even in the Jell-O museum. But those days are over because this was the most entertaining dessert I ever ate. Ever. Twelve separate glistening jiggly layers of fun. And if anybody wants the recipe, you can ask me to post it, because it's rather long. But I guarantee that if you make 12-layer Jell-O for your friends, you will be the life of the party. The making of this dessert is an act of LOVE!

 For example, several of the well-fed cousins, expressing ... uhh ... something. Yea Thanksgiving!

Fall Cooking Classes

To Register for Classes: 

Contact Barbara at logcabincooking@gmail.com

Class size limited to 10, so don't delay!

We are located 5 miles east of Asheville in Haw Creek

Locally grown heirloom pumpkins

Aunt Barb's Thanksgiving Pies    

Wednesday, November 16, 6:00-9:00 $10

This one is an "Aunt Barb" class, meaning that it's informal, in my own kitchen next door to the teaching cabin, and affordably intended for the young-ish (between 21 and 40 or so). But anyone who wants to learn to make a pie for Thanksgiving is welcome! The fee covers ingredient costs. I'll serve some seasonal snacks when you arrive, and if you'd like to bring beer or wine to share, you'd be very popular. We'll start off making a flaky butter pie crust and then we'll craft two totally-from-scratch pies: Bourbon pecan and heirloom candy roaster pumpkin pie.
Then we will eat our pies. Oh boy!

Candy Roaster Pumpkin Pie

Hide N' Bake: Special  Holiday Refrigerator Cookies and Savory Crackers

Wednesday, December 7th, 6:00-9:00pm $45 

"Spumoni" Chocolate, cherry, pistachio cookie dough

  
     For some of us, hiding the cookie and cracker dough in the freezer is like “out of sight, out of mind.” For others of us ….well, raw dough is a treat all by itself. Hey, this is a class for all of us! We’ll make a bunch of festive cookie and cracker doughs that can be frozen into logs or portions and baked off in small batches for you or popped in the oven as needed for holiday parties, visiting or gift-giving. (A selection of unbaked cookie dough logs also makes a great gift!) 
     Cookies include a variety of  pinwheels (date walnut, orange cranberry, and chocolate/mocha), vanilla/chocolate checkerboards, dried cherry walnut layered cookies, buttery sugar cookies that can scream “decorate me!”, lemon cornmeal, paperthin gingersnaps (you can eat a LOT of these), sesame whole grain crackers and the favorite of all the men I know…Aunt Mary’s crunchy spicy cheese things. We’ll sample our wares in class and participants will leave with a variety of cookie dough logs for freezer or tummy. Many ingredients such as sorghum syrup, cornmeal, and eggs will be sourced from the Asheville area. We’ll have prosecco and healthy appetizers to start, but it’s cookies for dinner. All levels welcome.

Log Cabin Cooking & Native Ground Music Open House Holiday Sale 

Saturday, December 10th 1:00-5:00pm

Shop local for the holidays in Haw Creek! I'll have my 10 cookbooks for sale and hubby, Wayne Erbsen has a bazillion old-time and bluegrass music instruction, civil war, railroad, etc. books all at a 10 % discount. There will be a live music jam, kitchen gift making demos, raffle door-prizes, hearth-side old-time food and beverages from my cookbooks. Bring the whole family! I'll post directions in December.

Saved from the stew-pot: The perky carrot family ...

I want to be more well-behaved. Really, I do.

But when I pulled these carrots up, I just knew they were, er .... special. They looked so innocent, buried in the dirt with their green furry fronds poking up so nice and vegetable-like. But it looks to me like they've been havin' some fun down in the nether-regions of my fall garden. I'm thinking seriously of leaving the rest of their buddies in the ground so I don't have to buy any carrot seeds next year!

I put them back out in the garden, it's where they belong. Don't let the kids see this picture, or you'll have some 'splainin to do! I'll make the photo little.
(I swear this is how they came out of the ground!)

Do these cornmeal lemon blackberry jam thumbprint cookies make me look fat?

A punchy ending to a fun weekend at our mountain cabin. Our friends left after breakfast and, well, a tin of cookies was left sitting out on the porch.

I actually think the cookies look better on my husband, Wayne.

And I guarantee they'll look even better on you. So in a minute, I'll share the recipe.
After breakfast.

The cabin, built on the side of the mountain in the 1880's sits on 65 acres that are so steep you have to pull yourself up by tree roots. No lights, no indoor plumbing, and no modern appliances = breakfast cooked on the cookstove.

Served on the porch. My wood-fire grilled giant marconi peppers stuffed with local sausage pencil cobb cheese grits, and our friend Jen's crusty bread.
And now that we've eaten breakfast, let's play with our cornmeal cookies ...
Corn showed up in just about all baked Appalachian heritage foods as wheat was scarce and corn was grown in patches straight up these mountains.

These fragrant cookies are crunchy, not too sweet and perfect with a cup of afternoon tea. I highly recommend that you make your own fabulous blackberry jam next summer to fill the cookies! Raspberry also goes well with these.

Appalachian Log Cabin Cornmeal Lemon Blackberry Jam Thumbprint Cookies

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup coarse yellow cornmeal
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Grated zest of one lemon
Cream butter and sugar; add egg, vanilla, lemon zest. Combine dry ingredients and then add to butter mixture and blend well. Form into two skinny logs, wrap and refrigerate or freeze until firm. To bake, slice about 1/2 inch thick and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. When softened a bit, make a dent in each cookie with your finger or a wooden spoon handle, and fill with a LITTLE dab of blackberry jam. (Your baked cookies will be prettier if you put your jam in a baggie, cut the tip off, then pipe jam into cookie hole.) Bake at 350º for 10 minutes until edges are lightly browned.

Emergency Miracle Fig Ripening Trick

Here's what your September figs ought to look like. This is a Celeste fig. I've had the tree for 10 years and it's just now producing yummy figs. But, if your fig tree is full of little green knobby figs that will surely succumb to frost before ripening, I have a surprise for you. You can hasten the ripening of your little darlings with a nifty trick I learned a few years ago from my friend, Andrew, at a Men's Garden Club of Asheville plant sale. Well, I'll just show you.

Here's my Brown Turkey Fig tree that literally froze to the ground last winter, so the onset of this year's figs has been mighty slow. There are a gazillion figs on it that look like this:

OK, so here's what you do.


Pour a little dab of olive oil in a small dish.

Then, dab a tiny bit on the end of each fig. In 5 days, your green knobby fig will look like this:

The process is called oleification, discovered several centuries BC, probably by a Mediterranean fig farmer who was merrily quaffing his Tuscan red wine and sloppily dipping his bread into olive oil while sitting in his fig tree. Five days later, he had ripe figs to eat with his cheese panino. Anyway, the olive oil does something to the scientific guts of the fig, hastening ripening by about 3 weeks! The figs aren't as good when rushed, of course, but much better than a poke in the face. And, you can control the flow of your ripe figs so they don't swamp you all at once.

This happy fig has a slice of Roberta's fantastic cow's milk "Terroir" cheese in his mouth.

Caramel Onion Pie

    Last night, five of my young-ish friends invited me to a progressive garden dinner they were hosting in their vintage West Asheville neighborhood. We bicycled to four urban bungalows and enjoyed a course at each with wine and garden tours. All the food was prepared by these professional bakers out of their front yard bungalow gardens ... from homemade hard cider with veggie antipasti to gazpacho with homemade ciabatta, squash risotto, to squashamole and salad. Our final destination was to be a sunset dessert at an old 19th century rambling farmhouse. Too much schmoozing, we arrived at dark. 
     I noticed a big ladder on the porch, leaning on the roof with plates and forks nearby. Holey squash blossoms, I thought, we're having a roof-top dessert. My perky dinner-mates chirped "are you ok to climb on the roof Barbara?" I am, after all, their mothers' age. "Oh, of course, I do this all the time," I say as up and more up we go. I tried hard to walk normal and not skooch on my butt. And then, perched on the roof apex, we ate pie. In the dark. Watching a beautiful lightening storm come our way. Closer and closer.
     The pie was a caramel, chevre and onion with a flax seed and coconut crust. The cheese had red onions in it because somebody gave our young host a quart of homemade chevre mixed with raw red onions. So of course he made a frozen goat cheese and raw red onion caramel pie. Actually delicious, only i had to go to the dentist this morning and my breath stank to high heavens and there I was explaining to him about how I ate a raw red onion dessert pie on the roof with a bunch of young bakers in a lightening storm last night. 
     Remind me never to be an old lady.

Chevre-stuffed Squash Blossoms

If you have a dental appointment tomorrow, you might not want to eat a chevre, raw red onion and caramel pie. So here's a little something quick and easy that includes a bit of creamy goat cheese. 

Pick boy squash blossoms (with stem attached) in the morning. Shake out that bee. Rinse the little critters off and take out the little thingie in the middle if you want. Put in a spoonful of fresh goat cheese  and some chopped herbs from your garden or someone elses. Fold in the edges of the flower and dip in buttermilk and then roll in some good fresh ground local cornmeal , coarse salt and few grindings of pepper. Melt a little butter in a hot iron skillet and panfry until brown and crispy. Serve them to your guests straight out of the skillet. And be sure to eat that little lump between the blossom and the stem; it's sweet!

July Cooking Classes

Hey! The gardens are in full swing with all this wet and warm weather. Perfect for picking, cooking and eating. See you soon I hope!

Garden to Picnic Table                     Wednesday, July 6, 6:00-9:00 $45

Blackberry mint mojitos and crunchy pan-fried squash blossoms stuffed with garlic scape pesto and local chevre will get us up and running. Then we’ll wander into the gardens and pick our dinner fixings. Heirloom fingerling potatoes are so delicious they only need a golden roast along with optional toasty local fennel sausage. Yellow squash strips get a pistachio mint pesto stuffing, skinny green and yellow beans get tossed with sherry vinegar marinated red onions and cucumbers. And for our dessert, a gooey, drop dead gorgeous, easy blackberry chocolate dip-in cake.

Blackberry bittersweet chocolate OH MAMA! Pie

Oh My! Summer Fruit Pie         Sunday, July 10, 1:00-4:00 $40

July is THE best month of the year for fruit pie! We’ll gather round the picnic table for.summer berry Prosecco spritzers and stuffed garden veggie appetizers. Then we’ll make flaky butter crusts to wrap around the fruit filling of your choice. Each participant will make a small pie to take home or share in class. Fillings include blueberry, peach, blackberry, plum and more. While our pies bake, we’ll enjoy a slice of “Oh, Mama” wild blackberry bittersweet chocolate pie and a scoop of homemade creamy vanilla frozen custard.

All proceeds for this class go to the Appalachian Foods Storybank, a new oral history program of slow food Asheville. If you or a family member or friend have tales to tell about old-time mountain farming, cooking, family food traditions that need to be preserved, contact Barbara at the link below. We can help capture stories via written word, photos, and video. Volunteers needed, training provided.


Classes held in East Asheville, 5 miles from downtown. To register, email Barbara 
or call 828 298-2270

Stay tuned for new spring classes!

On Monday, I'll be posting classes for April and May. Stop back by soon and we'll talk about how to prepare those fabulous creasy greens popping up in your yard about now.