🎄🦊 Max' care package

Hey Max,

this was supposed to be just a little package, but somehow I went overboard (parental leave and online ordering groceries 😝 ). In addition, as already mentioned, Christmas sweets are the big thing currently as well, so after watching a few British and American folks reviewing German sweets on youtube, here is what we came up with. Please share (especially with the illustrator 😉) and enjoy !

General sweets

• Toffifee – This seems to be the favourite of a lot of folks, it’s a toffee kinda thing with a whole hazelnut. One often gets them from their grandparents (and a little money attached) for birthdays / Christmas
• Riesen (giants) – From the same manufacturer (Storck) as Toffifee, my wife told me that it was her room mates favourite when she lived in London. Chocolate.
• Knoppers – Same manufacturer again, a “waffle bar”, well known with it’s slogans “Das Frühstückchen / The little breakfast” or “Morgens halb zehn in Deutschland / half ten in Germany”. As a kid everyone wanted to have one in their lunchbox. Smart marketing.
• Katjes Gummibears – Just some non-Haribo 🦄 Gummibears
• Bambina – This is a chocolate bar from the brand Zetti which has it’s origins in Leipzig, the city where I live. It is also a typically “Eastern German” thing, so it invokes memories in a lot of folks from the former east.
• Knusperflocken (crispy flakes) – Same as Bambina also from Zetti and “Eastern German“. It’s like a chocolate infused crispbread drop. I really enjoy it.
• Gelee Bananen (gelatined bananas) – One of my favourites, chocolate covered banana gelatine. What amazes me, it tastes like the almost extinct dessert banana Gros Michel, because the artificial aroma was invented before its use declined.

Christmas sweets

• Marzipankartoffeln (marzipan potatoes). – What’s more German than potatoes? Marzipan is really big here, especially in the Christmas time.
• Gebrannte Mandeln (candied/roasted almonds). – In the traditional German Christmas markets you can buy all kind of candied nuts freshly made. It’s just amazing. Hopefully the pre-packaged stuff is just as good.
• Lebkuchen (gingerbread) is quite typical (compare the Hansel & Gretel fairy tale). Most famous is the original “Nürnberger Lebkuchen” from Nuremberg, personally I prefer plain / sugar coated variants, but most people seem to go for chocolate.
• Stollen is a sweet bread with raisins, I prefer the ones with a layer of marzipan, because it keeps the stollen moist a bit longer. You typically eat it in slices at “tea time” (which we call Kaffee – coffee) with a nice cuppa. This one is special, because the one from Dresden is most famous.
• Dominosteine (dominoes / domino stones) – These are some of my favourites. It has a three layers, gingerbread, jelly and marzipan. The combination is just amazing. You can get them with different chocolates.
• Spekulatius is apparently Dutch by origin and a gingerbread spiced shortbread. Typically without a chocolate covering, but who doesn’t love chocolate?
• Vanillekipferl (vanilla – ???) are moon shaped biscuits and my favourite biscuit. It is a tradition to bake different kinds of cookies and biscuits, especially if you have kids I got you a baking mix, the instructions are easy:
  1. Mix the backing mix in a bowl
  2. add 75g cold margarine or butter, knead the dough for 3 minutes
  3. The dough can be worked with directly
  4. Separate the dough into two halves and roll them both to ~20cm long rolls
  5. Cut the rolls into 12 pieces each (with a knife)
  6. Roll each piece into a finger-thick and form into a moon-shape
  7. Carefully arrange them on a baking paper on a baking sheet
  8. Preheat the oven on 180 Celsius, bake 8 minutes on air circulation or 10 minutes on top/bottom heat.
  9. Put vanilla sugar or powdering sugar on them while they are still hot
  10. They are soft while they are still hot, but will harden over time

Feuerzangenbowle

fire-tongs punch. Okay. This is interesting. Mulled wine is a big thing on aforementioned Christmas markets, and this special kind of mulled wine made famous by a movie from 1944.

I have packed you a “sugar hat”, a metal “tongs” and a flavour package with FZB which contains cinnamon, clove and aniseeds in a teabag.

You need additionally:

1. Great friends / family to do this with, I would recommend 3 to 4 additional people.
2. Rum (cheap will do) – With 54% alcohol per volume or more – it needs to BURN! (A quantity like 200/300 ml should suffice)
3. Two liters of DRY red wine.
4. One or two big “juice oranges” (alternatively 300ml orange juice)
5. A lemon

Now you do the following:

1. Put the red wine, lemon juice, orange juice and flavour package in a big enough pot (ensure that the tong is not falling through) and heat the stuff up (best with a lid).
2. It mustn’t boil because that would evaporate the alcohol from the wine, so keep it below 78 Celsius 😉
3. Remove the flavor bag
4. Once the stuff is warm, gather everyone around the table, put the pot in the middle.
5. Put the tong on the pot, put the sugar hat on the tong.
6. Put Rum into a bowl, and pour it over the sugar hat with a tea spoon until soaked.
7. Put the sugar hat on fire, if it doesn’t burn → More rum.
8. Keep the sugar hat burning by pouring rum with a spoon
9. Continue until the whole sugar hat vanished.
10. Give it a good swirl, Fill cups for everyone and enjoy! It’s kinda overwhelmlingy strong for the first zip or two, but then it loosens up everyone 😆
11. If you have more FZB than people, just put back on the stove on small heat to keep warm.

Please be careful and don’t burn the house down 😆

Best,

Eipi