Please don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, Advent is a very special time for me and who doesn't love the food... But Christmas-shennanigans shouldn't start until the first sunday in Advent. That's my rule and I'm sticking to it... except... for food.
Food, glorious food. So much food is only made and available in the Christmas season. I'm having my first black pudding of the season later today. I love me some good blood sausage! Another Christmas stable is honing hjerter and it just so happens, that you have to prepare those around my birthday if you want them to be ready in time for Advent.
Honning hjerter - pre-dough
Making honing hjerter (honey hearts) is easy, but time consuming. It won't take up a lot of your time per se, but it does take a lot of time before they are ready to munch on. I figured I'd share the process with you in real time so you can join me if you'd like to.
For the pre-dough you'll need:
500g Honey
500g Flour
I go all out when I make these and only use the best of the best ingredients, local honey and local flour!
If your familiar with making pasta, the process is somewhat similar to being with.
Place your flour on your counter top, and put the honey on top.
Fold the flour into the honey, you'll get to a point where it seems like it will never make a dough but just keep working.
It may help to do a handful or so at a time, above you can see the difference. Gathering this dough is a workout for your hands, so enrol any and all family members to help you. When you have a consistent dough, work it a little more until it becomes very sticky, then put it in a container (I prefer glass) and place it in your fridge.
If you are finding it very difficult to gather the dough and are lucky enough to have a stand mixer then just pop it in with a dough hook and leave it to do its magic. It will likely take a while, but so will making it by hand.
That's all for now. The dough needs to sit in the fridge for about a month, the longer the better.
What is your favourite Christmas food?
This is interesting! I look forward to the rest of this recipe. I hadn't heard of it before.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite food at Christmas is my mother's Christmas dinner with goose, potato dumplings (Klöße) and caramalised sauerkraut. My favourite biscuits are called Vanillekipferl and I just can't seem to make them like my mother's. These biscuits have a lot of almonds in them and taste just lovely. When I took part in a bread baking class, I baked pastries with frangipane, an almond paste, and they tasted just like the biscuits!
It's interesting how tied we are to our culture if what foods we associate with any given holiday, isn't it? I love hearing about what other people eat and look forward to. I have a tradition of baking Christmas cookies with my friend every year, we almost alway make pebernødder and those are very good too, especially with white pepper. I'm a spicy cookie lover. I love trying to see if I can taste all the spices going into a pebernød. You'll see in a month's time that these honing hjerter contain a good deal of spices too :)
DeleteHappy Birthday! We have a similar rule about Christmas belonging in Advent because today is also my elder daughter's birthday :)
ReplyDeleteI'm liking the sound of the honey hearts.
Thank you so much and happy birthday to your daughter!
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