Ginger and nutmeg notwithstanding there are a few other flavors that remind me of holidays past. My childhood holidays were heavy on cardamom and almond, influences from the Danish side of my family.
Several weeks before Christmas, my mother makes, from scratch, Danish pastry. For those who have only had the squashy, flavorless blobs commonly called "Danish" you have seriously missed out. True Danish pastry is a light-as-air, flaky dough that is shaped and filled with things like lingonberry jam and almond paste (who wants prunes in pastry --puhleez!). My favorite is the coffee cake that is rolled strips of the pastry filled with almond paste and baked in a springform pan, cinnamon roll style. Mom makes them every year -- it's an all-day affair to make the dough, then another whole afternoon to form, fill and bake them. Thanks for shipping them to us, Mom!
As for cardamom, I have several favorites. The first are crispy cookies called fattiman, which are leavened with baking amonia (see your pharmacist for that, folks) and deep fried. Then there is my grandmother's specialty, yule (that's u-luh) bread. Yule bread is an egg and milk dough, flavored with cardamom and a healthy quantity of raisins, currants and candied citron. It's light and flavorful, and not very sweet.
Since I am not quite ready to let go of Christmas, I made my first batch of yule bread today. It was a little interesting, since Grandma's recipe makes assumptions about what you know as a baker. I worked through it though, and it is every bit as good as I remember -- the fragrant cardamom is a postcard from my past.
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Here is the recipe, just as Grandma wrote it down:
Start with her "Rolls" recipe, as follows:
2 C milk (or 2/3 C pwd milk and 1 1/2 C water)
1 yeast cake
1 TB sugar
2 tsp salt
2 slightly beaten eggs
1/4 sq butter or margarine
Flour to make dough.
Heat milk until just luke warm. Soak yeast cake in 1/2 C of warm milk along with the sugar. Add warm milk in which the butter has been added to the beaten eggs and salt. Add the disolved yeast cake. Do not use too much flour. Let raise just once and then roll out on board and make into rolls and let raise again. Bake in 425 oven.
Yule Bread
Use above recipe and add
1/2 pkg raisins
1/2 pkg currants
1/2 pkg citron (about 4 oz)
4 tsp. ground cardamom (Spice Island)
1/2 sq of butter instead of 1/4 square.
Allow to raise once. Then make it into two loaves. Let rise again but not too much. Bake in 375 oven.
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Mmmmmm! Best served warm from the oven, or lightly toasted, with good butter.
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