Christmas taste of home
CHRISTMAS always started for us in the week coming up to Advent when we made an Advent wreath.We would go out with my father on the tractor to get the nicest fir branches from the farm. We would wrap the dark green twigs around a wreath made of straw and tie it with green wire.
We would decorate it with holly twigs with red berries and cones. Afterwards we would put four short, thick red candles on it and when it came to the first of Advent we would be allowed to light the first one which meant it was only four more weeks to Christmas.
That meant it was time to put up the decorations around the fireplace with the green garlands and little red wooden figures of people on sleighs, skis, and horses, wooden angels with golden wings and all sorts of wooden Christmas trees.
Our Christmas tree never went up before Christmas Eve and when it was up it had real red candles that Santa would light before we heard the bell ring outside to say he had been there.
At the beginning of December we would finally get out all the Christmas music and baking gear. Of course, no one could bake Christmas biscuits and gingerbread without the Christmas music which put us all in the right spirit for Christmas. What excitement.
My mother made up to seven or eight different types of dough for the biscuits and gave us some of each. We could make whatever we wanted and naturally we were always fighting over the nicest and best cookie cutters. We would have large sections of the kitchen covered in dough and the Christmas music blaring and we would all be singing along. The fire would be on in the stove and the smell of the freshly baked biscuits would be floating through the entire house — cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves and oranges zest.
We would have the cookies with the cocoa and the almond on the top brushed with some egg yolk, then we would have the cinnamon stars with fluffy egg whites on top, the gingerbread and the orange biscuit and, of course, we got to cut out all the different shapes and sizes with our Christmas cutters.
We sang Christmas songs while rolling out the dough and it is just the best memory to have. Then afterwards it would take us for ever to clean up and I remember my mother even using a scraper to scratch the dough from the floor. Usually we were all marched into the bathroom for a scrub in the bath. I don’t know where she got the enthusiasm because she always made everything from scratch.
All the biscuits were then put into beautiful old tins which we would remember so well from previous Christmases.
They were also not taken out until the first of Advent, and usually when it came time for putting the biscuits away there were already some missing, but of course none of us kids had absolutely anything to do with it.
Cooking and baking had such a great place in my memories that I went off and studied at CIT in Cork to become a chef. From there I went to work in places like Michael Clifford’s in Clonmel, one of the leading Hotels of the World Victoria Jungfrau in Switzerland, The Tannery in Dungarvan and The Old Convent in Clogheen.
After all that I took on the role of product development for Ballybrado House, my family’s business near Cahir. And to pass on some of these memories I’ve put the instructions for how to make a gingerbread house on our website, www.ballybrado.com, along with other Christmas recipes.
JULIA FINKE is the product development manager at Ballybrado Organic Food and Farming, a family run agri-business started by her father Josef in Cahir, Co Tipperary, in 1983.
Ballybrado was in the vanguard of the organic food movement in Ireland and the brand continues today, with a range of products on offer.
Julia trained as a chef and chef pattissière before taking on the role of product development manager in the home farm business.
Roll up your sleeves and make your own
THE NIGHT BEFORE:
1The dough has to rest for 16 hours so make it the day before you actually want to put the house together.
2Get an A2 sheet of cardboard. Draw and cut out the stencils for the gingerbread house as in the picture here.
3This house is best built in team work.
The Stencils
The base on which the house will be built should be 30cm x 40cm in
measurement.
The Dough
Ingredients For Baking Gingerbread:
Honey 750g
Sugar 375g
Butter 375g
Whole Grade Spelt Flour 1,500g
Ground Cinnamon 15g
Ground Cardamom 15g
Ground Cloves 10g
Organic Eggs 3
Baking Soda 15g
Water 3 tbsp.
Before you start, put on your favourite Christmas music that will put you right in the Christmas spirit.
Baking the Gingerbread House:
1. In a large pot combine honey, sugar and butter and bring ingredients to the boil, stirring occasionally. Then leave to cool.
2. In a different bowl mix flour and spices. When the honey mixture is cool add it to the flour and spice mix. Add baking soda which has been dissolved in the water.
Add eggs and knead it all into a smooth dough.
3. Cover bowl with clingfilm and rest in the fridge for 16 hours or over night.
4. Roll out dough to ½cm thickness. Place stencils on the dough to cut them out to the correct size. Make a base measuring 30cm x 40cm on which you build the house.
5. Bake the various gingerbread pieces on an oiled baking tray or on parchment paper in a preheated oven at 200-225°C for 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
6. Place the stencils on the baked gingerbread again and cut the baked pieces to size so that they will all fit together nicely except for the roof as it often looks nicer with rounded edges.
7. Cut out a door and two windows in the front and two windows on either side if you so wish.
8. Stick the various gingerbread pieces together with royal icing and decorate as you go.
Icing for putting the house together and for decorating:
Icing sugar 250g
Egg White 1
A squeeze of Lemon Juice
Method:
Add 250g icing sugar to 1 egg white and stir until combined to a smooth icing. Add lemon juice.
Fill into a piping bag and use to stick the gingerbread house pieces together.
The icing can be used to make icicles along the roof’s edge by squeezing a ball of icing at the edge and slowly letting it drip down. The icing is also used to stick all the decorations onto the house.
With the leftover dough you can make a fence for around the house. Make little round logs, some gingerbread trees or simply make some gingerbread men.
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