Merry Christmas - Joyeux Noel

Merry Christmas - Joyeux Noel

 

I am celebrating this Christmas in a very French spirit - a French Christmas - my 2025 theme

This them was inspired by a lovely little copper cookie cutter in the shape of the Eiffel Tower

Champs Elysee at Christmas

I chose a real tree this year for the tradition and good smells of a Noble Fir tree.  I brought in some cedar branches from the yard . eucalyptus, magnolia leaves and added them around the house.  I collected the pinecones that dropped from the trees on the Morman church front grounds and added a little fun glitter.  Then I started to add lots of twinkle lights and candles

Simple elegance:   I polished up some silver pieces and cleaned my crystal so that the pieces would sparkle and reflect the holiday lights.

No red this year but muted metal colors and a little soft green.  I limited my tree ornaments to support the simple elegance I wanted.

And the packages have all been wrapped with a soft color and classic silk French ribbons.  I have collected ribbons from around the world - France, New York City and San Francisco's Britex Fabrics on Maiden Lane.  I searched my stash for my color palette and chose from what I had.    Aren't they beautiful?  It's really hard to find lovely ribbons like these.

OK  The packages are wrapped and under the tree.  Time to get in the kitchen:

I make peppermint bark every year.  The cookies do change.  This year: French cookies bien sur (of course).   Sables are basic sugar cookies and palmiers are shaped puff pastry - like a squished croissant.  So Eiffel Tower sugar cookies and almond palmiers it is:

There is a stray sheep in the mix....a nod to Kate and a private joke  Kate IS a badass on the soccer field for sure.

Here is the best recipe I tried for my almond palmiers  demo at end of post

This year I added some almond roca to the edibles.  There is a fun history of almond roca that Amber told me while we were in Tacoma, WA where almond roca was born.  We were in the Ice Cream Social shop and chose the "Roca" flavor.  It was a fun story and so these candies had to make it into the box 

  Here's a link to the history of almond roca

You can't feel completely French without having a beret among your hats wardrobe.  So I went to work on making some for my pals.  Goats are more curious about these wool chapeaux than looking chic but I managed to get them to sport the for a few seconds 

LuLu

Bullet

Rose

Poppy

Christmas flowers: paper whites and amaryllis of course

And a sweet little hand for Hattie-age 15 months  (with a poodle of course)

I so much enjoy this season.  It's festive.  It's busy with lots of get togethers and fun.  We put aside our differences- if we have any  and celebrate our love for each other.  We will also remember the first Christmas in Bethlehem and our gift of Jesus Christ

Merry Christmas

Joyeux Noel

love,

Denise

Almond Palmiers

Ingredients:

4 oz butter - room temperature

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1 7 oz tube almond paste, cut into pieces

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

sliced raw almonds. optional

Method:

 In the bowl of an electric mixer beat butter until creamy - about 1 minute

Add the powdered sugar and almond paste and beat until creamy - about 1 minute

Add the egg and almond extract.  Beat until combined

Sprinkle your work surface with granulated sugar

Carefully unfold the pastry dough that has defrosted in the refrigerator

Sprinkle 1 TBS sugar on top surface of one piece of pastry dough

Using a rolling pin roll out the pastry to a 12"by 12" square

Spread 1/2 of the almond cream evenly over the pastry square

Sprinkle thinly sliced rawalmonds on top.  My addition

Roll up the outside edges to meet in the center and then Roll the 2 halves together

Refrigerate at least 2 hours

Repeat with 2nd piece of refrigerated pastry

When ready to bake heat oven to 400 deg

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper

Unwrap the pastry logs and with a sharp knife cut off the uneven ends

Cut 1/4"-1/2" pieces and place flat side of each piece on baking sheet 2" apart

Bake until golden brown  12- 14 minutes

Cool on cooling rack 2 minutes before removing cookies from sheet

When completely cool dust with powdered sugar.

Try these   They are easy and so yummy

Patisserie's footnote:

Pepperidge Farm puff pastry dough is readily available and very reliable but if you are looking for Gluten Free as I do when baking for my Denver family it will take a search.  I found a small package at Sprouts and a normal size like this one at Albertosns.  It's always good to keep a package in the freezer.

When I was in culinary school in Paris we learned to make this from scratch.  This skill serves absolutely no purpose in the life of a chef when it is available in the market.

Third post:   Granddaughters

I rarely post about my girls but this year has been especially celebratory.  Ella - age 22 graduated from Macalester College

Eventhough I was not able to attend the ceremony in St. Paul I watched Ella receive her diploma streaming.  I'm so proud of her

Three days later her sister Kate graduated from East High School in Denver

The family spend a busy summer together and then Kate was off to University of Puget Sound.  She had a fabulous first season playing women's soccer and just completed her first semester of study.  I was fortunate enough to spend a week with her in Denver and attended 6 of her soccer games.  Kate  is fun to watch

Reina graduated from Lincoln HS in Seattle and had lots of parties that week.  She is on her way home after her first semester in Madison, WI at the U of Wisconsin 

               

While I was in Seattle younger daughter, Gabriela - age 15 danced her heart out with her recital performances with "All that Dance" - dance company.  Gabriela is extremely talented and versatile with performances in at least 5 different disciplines.  She also plays the trumpet in her school bands

Watch out world.  This young lady will be driving in less than a month.  The West family took a family trip to England and Portugal before Reina left for college. 

I took one trip ti Seattle/Taacoma in October and another in September to watch Kate play soccer.

Gabriela and Kate in Tacoma at Stadium Bowl

after a soccer game

So I got to spend a lot of time with my family this year.   I cherish these times.

And a final little nod to this precious child who has brightened this world.  Hattie - is Ella and Kate's half sister.  She therefore has none of my DNA but I love love being around this little girl as she lightens up our world.

Here's looking at you too Hatte

Summer in a soup bowl Gazpacho

A couple of weeks ago my friends came over for a farm visit and we all pitched in with lunch.

Linda, myself and her 4 Colorado granddaughters

 Sometime during the sit-down Michele remarked Gazpacho is "summer in a soup bowl."  Precisely.  I thought I would share our luncheon menu since a lot of it came right from the garden/farm

Menu:

Gazpacho ( yes- even the 3 year old loved it)

Egg salad sandwiches

Watermelon pizza

Palmiers

Jun tea

Mis en place

Ingredients:

2 bell peppers, chopped into 1" square pieces

4 plum tomatoes, also 1" pieces

1 cucumber seeded but not peeled, 1 " pieces

1 red onion - 1 " pieces

3 garlic cloves, chopped finely

3 cups tomato juice or enough tomatoes to make your own

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1/4 cup good olive oil

1 1/2 tsp salt

pepper

avocado and or cilantro to garnish

Ina Garten's recipe on Food Network

Yes use a food processor but chop each vegetable up separately

Mix all veggies and tomato juice with olive oil and vinegar and store in the fridge for at least a day or two before serving

I have made this soup 3 times now and love each serving.  I will be sad when the tomatoes are gone.

Next up EGG SALAD sandwiches

Mis en place

EGG SALAD SANDWICHES

Ingredients

farm fresh or store bought pasture raised chicken eggs, hard cooked - I prefer to steam

mayonnaise

dijon mustard

red onions chopped fine

I dill pickle slice, chopped fine

fresh dill

salt and pepper

How to hard cook super fresh eggs:

When I first tried to hard boil my fresh eggs I found that the shells would not release from the white when I tried to peel them..  It happened the second, third and fourth times as well ????? So I did some research and found that super fresh eggs just don't do well boiled.  So I steam.  12 minutes in a steamer.  I could give you all of the chemistry behind this....Ask if you really want to know  otherwise just steam your eggs.  You will be glad you did.

Steam for 12 minutes.  Then cool in an ice water bath

Mix about 2 TBs of dijon mustard with about 1/2 cup mayonnaise to start then adjust as needed.  I used 6 eggs and this worked out well.  

Then add the red onion, dill pickle and fresh dill to the sauce.

Mix into the eggs

I use a box grater to cut up the egg but you can hand cut it as well

Assemble between two pieces of bread after piling on some condiments :  how about pickled onions?

I'll add the recipe to the end of the post

Add lettuce and as we did one nasturtium leaf.  The nasturtium leaves and blossoms are edible and add a bit of spice - kind of like arugula.

Egg salad sandwich with pickled onions, lettuce and nastursium leaves

Next up WATERMELON PIZZA

So much fun.  You can see that it is made up of a wedge of watermelon topped with blueberries and reap berries,  The "Cheese" is cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar and pushed through a pastry bag.  Linda's previous performance was with a little smaller hole in her bag thus a narrower stream of cream sheese/sugar

And for dessert:  PALMIERS - Gluten Free!!

Palmiers are a classic French pastry made from the pastry dough mille feuilles  (puff pastry)  This recipe is absolutely easy to make from Pepperidge Farm frozen puff pastry found in the freezer section of the grocery store and just follow Ina Gartens's recipe   But I decided to make it from scratch since I was really rusty from my school days at The Cordon Bleu in Paris.

Did you know that there are 739 layers of dough/butter/dough in the finished pate ?  You start out with a pie crust round then add a butter layer, wrap the edges of the pie pastry up and over the butter layer.  Now you have 3 layers.  With a sequence of rolling out and folding into thirds six times you end up with a beautiful uncooked dough

Roll the dough in sugar and cinnamon and then roll into a log by folding the outside edges two times each and meeting in the center,  Chill the dough again. 

Classic palmiers do not have cinnamon adulterating the flavor but what American does not like cinnamon sugar?

Then cut the chilled dough into slices

Put them one more time back into the fridge or freezer for a final chill then pop them into a preheated oven

450 degrees for just 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and sprinkle again with cinnamon sugar. 

These will go fast - especially with 9 people for lunch

I made this dough gluten free because my sweet Kate cannot have gluten.  But like any normal teenager she love loves pastries and bread.  Since she was coming for a visit I wanted to make these G-F palmiers for and with her,   She loved it 

We made this batch into twisted sticks.  Kate loves churros so this was our version of a G-F churro/palmier.  You can buy G-F frozen puff pastry in some markets @ $9/box l Yikes.  On the other hand the ingredients for making it at home was not much less.  Good news is I'm not rusty at the technique any more!

And that was our summer lunch!  

Hurricane Hilary has just past through here leaving a mess for all of us to clean up but not any damage here,  I think I have some time to make the pickled red onions 

I have an entire post dedicated to this condiment   Please click on this link to go to that post 

I use Marisa McClellan"s  Food in Jars book many times every summer and throughout the year.  You can also follow her website https://foodinjars.com for many additional ideas 

3 pounds of red onions, thinly sliced

2 cups apple cider vinegar

3/4 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 cups water

2 TBs Kosher or pickling salt

2 tsp whole mustard seed

1 tsp celery seed

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Combine the vinegar, water, sugar and salt in a pot over high heat and bring the brine to a boil

Add sliced onions to brine and stir to combine,  Reduce heat to medium and simmer briefly to soften onions.

Combine the spices to blend and then divide among 3 pint size jars

Evenly divide the onions among the jars.  Use tongs to transfer.

Pour brine over onions.

Pickles need to cure 48 hours before eating.

I used to water bath preserve these but I find they last in the fridge just fine.....they never last too long.  If you make 3 jars - give one jar to a friend,