Christmas cookies

Today we join MK and her class for a session of baking Christmas cookies. MK has decided in advance that we will make Vaniljekranse (Vanilla cookies) and so we set out to make the dough from home. As it later turns out, this is actually a mistake, as the situation called for it to be made on location so that the children may do everything from start to finish. That should not have come as a surprise. Anyway, here is how we made the dough:

• 400 g flour
• 300 g sugar
• 300 g butter
• 1 egg
• 50 g of almond flour (almonds blended by the splendid Bamix blender)
• the contents of one stalk of vanilla.

Mix the sugar and the vanilla in order to spread the vanilla evenly then mix flour, egg and cold butter into the mix and crumble into a texture a like grated parmesan. Set aside for a couple of hours in a cold place.

Ideally these cookies are supposed to be well-formed and therefore pressed out of a pastry bag or a mincer, but we did not have such fine tools, so we had to make do with manually crafted Vaniljekranse.

We are quite happy with the result and as it later turns out, the cookies are even better once they have cooled down a bit. They become more crisp which suits them well. The taste is great - warm or not, but the Price brothers would have told us in advance with all that butter.
Nevertheless, we don't make it to the prize table as others are voted in front of our vanilla cookies. Oh, boy.

The appartment is not well suited for wine storage and so we make a round trip to the secondary storage to place some boxes of wine that we will have to wait some years for us to taste. This means that it is a late dinner and this calls for something quick. T suggests pasta alla trapanese, which makes MK unhappy because she wants pesto. Nevertheless - T is a ruthless father and Trapanese it is. Here is how it goes

• 500 g of ripe tomatoes cut in cubes (and not de-seeded)
• a large handful of chopped basil
• 50 g of peeled almonds (again)
• one large portion of grated parmesan
• olive oil
• 3 cloves of garlic

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and toss the rigatoni (500 g) when cooked al dente. With it, we had a bottle of Monte Bruna 2006 Barbea d'Asti. Everything was 8,3/10

MK concluded that in the future she would only eat pesto with almonds!