White Christmas

This is a summary of today’s post .

• As the year draws to a close, we want to thank the more than 200,000 visitors who have come to The Garden Interior to enjoy and be part of our community.  As always, our promise to you is an ad-free, thoughtful and fun experience.  All we ask from you in return is that you share the site with family and friends.  Thank you!!
• A lovely White Christmas descends today, and the garden landscape is turned into a winter wonderland that lends a most festive air to the scene.  Inside, we are wrapping presents and cooking up a storm, featuring two of our best holiday recipes ever: A Christmas Stollen, a wonderful sweet bread from northern Europe, and a delicious and easy Christmas egg and cheddar soufflé.  They are our presents to you and your family, given in the hope that they will become annual traditions.
• Our complete list of recommended books for 2014 is now available and you can access all the short and fun reviews by clicking this link: 2014 Christmas Book List .  You are sure to find something for every taste and for every book lover on your holiday gift list!
• Also, please check out the photos posted in the area to the upper left, “Weekly Garden Photos”, for some new and beautiful pictures of what is going on in the garden as the year draws to a close.
• And in the “What I’m Reading” section (lower right), we are reviewing The Gardener of Versailles , by Alain Baraton.  Once upon a time, in a land far away, a wealthy and powerful (but not very nice) king ordered that the world’s most beautiful palace should be built for him and that it should be surrounded by one of the world’s most beautiful gardens.  The result was the palace of Versailles and, more than 300 years later, the present head gardener at Versailles has written a book to tell the world what it is like to garden in that paradise, beneath those famous windows.
• Has any of your friends been turned into a statue?  No?  One of mine has and today I am reminiscing about that (hint: he was an astronaut) and about how great it is to be headed home for Christmas after a long year of business travel.  There are four personal and sentimental vignettes that I think you will like: Jerusalem, Munich, Madrid and the Amazon.  Please check it out today, to the left of this post, under the headline “Snapshot: I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

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It is going to be a White Christmas after all.  It started snowing hard this morning and will continue all day and night, dropping nearly two feet of the stuff they say, the heaviest snow since we have lived here.  I wrapped the last presents like mad, worrying about my wife out in the blizzard, buying them faster than I can wrap them, but somehow it all came together as it always does.  That is a minor Christmas miracle in itself.  On Christmas Eve, we will open a few presents and have cheese fondue in the reading room, followed by a disk of video from Christmases when our children were small.  Tears of laughter all round, is the usual result . Then chocolate fondue in the reading room and we will all fall into bed rather late.

On Christmas Day, I will get up early, bake a Christmas Stollen and put a kringle in the oven to warm, treasured Scandinavian traditions from my childhood, and eventually everyone else will get up and we will start in on the presents in earnest.  Then we will have our favorite Christmas egg casserole.  Kids (younger kids) like to help with the Stollen, but it is best to make this before Christmas Day in future years, as it is much too involved for the great day itself; and you can make the egg soufflé the night before too.

Christmas Stollen

5½ cups flour (more if the dough is sticky and too like cookie dough)

4 tsp. baking powder

1½ cups sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. mace

1 tsp. ground cardamom

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg

8 oz. (or 1 10-oz. pkg.) slivered almonds, toasted and ground

1½ sticks unsalted butter

16 oz. softened cream cheese

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. almond extract

50 ml cognac (the size of an airplane bottle)

½ cup currants

½ cup golden raisins

½ cup dried cherries, chopped

½ cup dried pineapple, chopped

The peel of one lemon (not the white part), chopped fine

2 7-oz. tubes of almond paste (marzipan)

One tube of any cookie icing for decorating

Let the cream cheese and butter come to room temperature and put to one side.  Then sift together the dry ingredients in the first group.  Add the almonds, then cut in the butter with a pastry knife until the mixture resembles coarse sand.

In a blender, cream together the ingredients in the second group.  Pour this into a bowl and stir in the dried fruit.  Gradually add the wet mixture to the dry mixture until everything is well blended.

Work the dough into a ball and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface.  Knead it for a few minutes, just until the dough is smooth and elastic.  Divide the dough into two halves.  Shape one half of it into an oval, about 10 inches long and 8 inches wide and about one inch thick.  With the edge of a blunt butter knife, crease it lengthwise, just off center.  Roll out one of the tubes of almond paste to a little smaller than the crease, then lay the rolled out almond paste on top of the larger half of the Stollen, next to the crease.  Fold the smaller side of the Stollen over the larger side, and place it on a greased baking sheet.  The traditional idea, you see, is that the folded, lumpy bread resembles the bundle of the infant Jesus.

Brush it lightly with melted butter before baking.  Repeat for the second loaf.  Makes two large loaves or four small ones.  Bake at 350 for about 50-55 minutes.  If it gets too brown, cover it with aluminum foil.  Allow to cool before decorating it with the cookie icing.  The loaves can be prepared in advance and then frozen, to be cooked later.  One way to serve the bread is toasted with vanilla ice cream; then you can go completely off the deep end (it is Christmas, after all) by pairing it with a glass of a really good Madeira or Port.  Oh. My. God.

Christmas Egg and Cheddar Soufflé

1 lb. grated white cheddar

½ lb. sausage, cooked and drained

½ lb. good quality bacon, cooked and drained

Half a baguette of bread, cubed

9 eggs, beaten

3 cups whole milk

1 tsp. salt

1 ½ tsp. dry mustard

Spread the first four ingredients in a greased 9×13 baking dish.  Pour the next four ingredients on top and refrigerate overnight.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes and allow to rest ten minutes before serving.  Serves 6-8.

Earlier today I took Cosimo for a long Christmas walk around a pond not far from our house, despite the mounting accumulation of snow.  The only color in the landscape (other than the cheerful Christmas lights everywhere) was the startling red of the holly berries and an occasional fly-by of our resident pair of cardinals.  Which reminds me that, as the house grew quiet tonight and we were growing sleepy in front of the fire in our bedroom, we could hear our vigilant neighborhood owl outside, hooting a friendly Merry Christmas to all.