In the Christmas Bakery...

"In der Weihnachtsbäckerei, gibt es manche Leckerei..." This German Song basically says that when you're baking for Christmas you'll end up with a lot of tasty treats! And that's what I did.
It's a tradition in Germany to bake "Weihnachtsplätzchen" (Christmas cookies) during December in joyful anticipation of Christmas. They come in all sizes, shapes and tastes. My Mum and I usually make about 5-8 different types each year.
This year, of course, we can't bake together. So I thought I could at least try to introduce my American roommates to a few German holiday traditions.


I decided on baking two different types of Plätzchen: Vanillekipferl and Mokka-Wiebele (sorry guys, that's kind of untranslatable).
Luckily I was able to get most of the ingredients without problems. The Vanillekipferl confronted me only with the difficulty of getting a vanilla bean and hazelnut flour. Both were awfully expensive, the hazelnut flour even unaffordable, so I tried to smash granulated hazelnuts with a pan. It worked fine enough, but you should've seen my roommates faces...they probably thought I'd gone crazy.
What I wasn't able to get though was vanilla sugar. It seems that vanilla sugar is unknown in the U.S. But I could easily replace it with vanilla extract.
In the end, my Vanillekipferl turned out really well. They were less sweet that usual, but still nice. My roommates really liked them and were especially impressed that I'd made them from scratch and didn't use a cake mix.




To get everything for the Mokka-Wiebele (Coffee biscuits glued together with Nutella) was easy. They even have Nutella here in every store - who would have thought! The Mokka-Wiebele turned out just as good as at home and my roommates loved them!

And when I get back home to Germany I'm gonna face a similar challenge:
Over Thanksgiving I discovered my love for Pecan Pie! The Pecan nuts build that great crunchy topping - it really is my favorite pie!
Obviously I wanna try baking it in Germany, but I'm afraid we don't have corn syrup there (at least I've never heard of it before). So I'll either have to import corn syrup somehow (which will be difficult, because I think I'm already gonna exceed my baggage allowance for the plane with all the clothes that I bought over here), or I have to find a way to replace it. So we'll see how that works out...