Last year, we spent Christmas in India, and the year before we headed to Turkey.

This year, we had intended to go to Australia, but the timing didn’t line up so well with Sameer’s application for permanent residency in the UK.

So we stayed home, and went full British Traditionalist Tree:

.. with maybe a just a few personal touches.

I also got to bake some Christmas ‘biscuits’ this year, which I think I haven’t managed properly since Germany- largely due to the lack of people around to give them to.

For me, the star of the show is always the kahk- a shortbread donut filled with date, which is a recipe we inherited from my granddad and learnt to master from his partner Silvija.

This year, with the help of my thermomix, they ‘came good’. Easy enough to make, generally good taste.

I probalby do need batch up and make a few more next year though, as I always get golumn-y with them.

‘My precious’ etc etc.

I also made some of kahk’s cousin, cornetti- a triangular shaped dough (the same pastry as the kahk), filled with apricot jam. One of Sameer’s friends described these as ‘samosas’, so maybe I’ve somehow found a way to honour his culture too.

Also on the board was some biscotti (cantucci), made this year with salted almonds and figs.

Gingerbread stars were made in their millions, and coated with icing or dark chocolate. I also tried some inventive colouring with powdered food dye, but might skip that next year.

For truffles, I made white chocolate and green tea with coconut coatings, dark chocolate raspberry, and date-tahini salted caramel.

I felt less excited by the green tea this year than I have previously- they tasted just a bit too rich for me, which makes me think maybe I needed more tea.

The date-tahini truffles are one of my favourite things ever, are incredibly easy to make, and keep basically eternally in the freezer. I would make them more often except that then I would scoff them more often.

As a nod to my ‘German Heritage’, I also made some Vanilla Kipferln (little German/Austrian shortbread crescents).

Made them, and then clearly forgot about and had mostly eaten them by the time I took these photographs. Oops.

Here is one of the ‘leftover’ not-so-crescenty crescents.

Apparently forgettable, but they turned out great and were easy to make, so would probably do again.

The final star of the show, and I think Sameer’s favourite (although he also enjoyed the ‘donuts’) was fruitcake.

This is at least the second time I’ve made it in small cupcakes, and it was excellent this time around. Last time I remember slightly overbaking and drying them out. I did not write down what timing this was at 180 deg C, so presumably next year we will guess it all again.

I didn’t use any alcohol for the fruit as recipe-d in, and for some reason this country hasn’t invented apricot nectar yet, so I ended up blending a tin of actual apricots and adding that plus a bit of hot water to soak the fruit on the day.

Seriously though the cake has so much random stuff in it I’m fairly certain it would be impossible to tell if I’d gone with juice from any other fruits, vegetable or mineral…

All up I’m pretty happy with the lot of it. I definitely made too many gingerbread (but they are an easy win and a nice filler), and would maybe focus on making a few more truffles and kahk next year.

I’d also like to add some more Indian style sweets in if Sameer is open to it. We ended up giving them to friends, but also some of the people who work around our flats, and his favourite gym instructors, so might be nice to have a bit more of his side in the future.

OKok, I know that’s too much text about ‘cookies’

But the final things is- we bought a little thermal printer, and it is our favourite thing ever. No ink, just heat. Perfect for printing out a full list of ingredients/allergence for your giftbags!

And we also used it to print out little features for our tree:

Speaking of which.

Our flat has underfloor heating that is centrally controlled (a feature that I do not enjoy), so our local tree salesman advised us to hold up on the tree until the second weekend of December.

Sameer carried it home because he is sexist and gender roled/ because I have weak little noodle arms.

I did some decorating.

Here’s him with some nice lights on:

We also added some lights to our other ‘a tree is not just for Christmas’ tree, a noble fiddle leaf fig who has been with me since Germany:

Lots of seasons greetings from the not-really-Christmas-celebrate-y-but-still-loving-cookies-trees-and-lights two of us.

xx