Now I want to share some thoughts on favorite Christmas foods. As promised, there will be fruitcake. There will also be gingerbread, and lefse, and pfeffernusse and sandbakkels. Those of you who didn’t grow up in strongly German or Scandinavian parts of the country likely don’t know what those last three items are. Be patient and all will be revealed.

 To get it out of the way: fruitcake. 

One of the most reviled sweets on the planet, or at least in America. (Do they tell fruitcake jokes in other countries? I do not know.) “It’s hard. It’s dry. It’s tasteless. It lasts forever and you can use it as a doorstop.” All I can say is, if you have actually eaten fruitcake and you still think all those jokes are true, then you haven’t eaten a good fruitcake. I know this because I’ve eaten good fruitcake and bad fruitcake. My husband has made some good fruitcakes, the long-term sort that require repeated applications of rum, sherry, or other liquor over a period of a few months. My mother used to make really good fruitcake too. It was moist and delicious – dense, yes, but that kept it from falling to pieces when you sliced it. Full of candied fruits and nuts (now if you don’t like those things, or raisins, then no, you won’t even like a good fruitcake. I’m sorry.). Her sister, my aunt Mary, used to mass-produce what was probably the worst fruitcake I’ve ever had, and give it away to everybody she knew at Christmas, whether we wanted it or not (we didn’t). Dry, crumbly, over-baked and sour-tasting. So it’s all a matter of care. (I did learn later that Auntie Mary never measured flour properly – she scooped rather than spooned – and that probably made a difference.)

 Gingerbread, on the other hand. 

Everybody loves gingerbread, right? Why it’s considered mainly a Christmas-time treat, I don’t really know. Maybe because of the warm tones of the flavor? Everybody knows gingerbread men and gingerbread houses as symbols of the season. But gingerbread also makes me think of a chapter in P.L. Travers’s first Mary Poppins book. Mary takes her young charges to Mrs. Corry’s shop for gingerbread (not at Christmas – that’s another chapter I’m saving for later). The cakes of gingerbread are decorated with gilt-paper stars, and Mrs. Corry asks Jane and Michael whether they’ll keep the stars. “We always do,” Jane replies, which implies this was a common thing at the time when the book is set. The children tell Mrs. Corry where they keep their stars, and that night, she and her two daughters show up at the Banks house. Mary Poppins brings the paper stars to them, and Jane and Michael watch the four of them go up the hill down the street, climb a pair of ladders resting up against the sky, and glue the stars up. Because how else do they get up there?

Lefse is another food that is oddly identified with Christmas in my opinion, though depending on where you live, it might be available year-round. What is it? Well, imagine a tortilla, but instead of being made with flour, it’s made with potatoes. Some recipes use mashed potato, some use instant potatoes or potato flour. It’s cooked on a special griddle, often with the use of special sticks for turning it over. It’s commonly eaten rolled up with butter and sugar spread on the inside. Some people make it to the thickness of a tortilla, but in my opinion thinner is better. One of the better toppings I ever found for it was filling left over from some mooncakes my daughter made for her Chinese New Year celebration one year – an apricot-jam-and-coconut combo. I called the result Chinese-Norwegian fusion cuisine.

 Pfeffernusse. Ah.

This is a traditional German cookie (the name literally translates to “pepper-nuts”), flavored with molasses, anise (yeah, if you don’t like black licorice, you won’t like these), and a variety of spices including most of those found in “pumpkin spice” and a touch of black pepper. After baking, they’re rolled in powdered sugar. These cookies remind me of my dad; he and I were the ones in my immediate family who liked them best. The best ones were made by Archway, and after I moved out Dad and I used to compare notes every year on where we could find them in town as they gradually disappeared. (Are you kidding me? I just peeked, and Amazon is selling Archway pfeffernusse for $15 for a 6 oz. package!) One year I decided to make my own, with mixed results. Yes, they turned out great, but I made one big mistake. The recipe said “makes 18 servings” and for some reason I thought that meant 18 cookies and decided to double the recipe. What it meant was 18 servings of three cookies. I realized something might be wrong when I started measuring out eight cups of flour, but by then it was too late. I rolled and baked cookies for hours. I gave my dad a gallon Ziploc bag full of pfeffernusse at Christmas, and I was still eating what was left of them in the early summer.

 Finally there are sandbakkels, another cookie I haven’t had for too long. 

I’ve never seen commercially made ones either, though maybe they exist. That’s doubtful, though, because they’re extremely labor-intensive to make. They’re a shortbread-type cookie, made by pressing dough by hand into fluted tins. We used to make these nearly evey year when I was a kid; it was hard work, but a lot of fun. I remember being so thrilled when I was deemed old enough to help. After baking, they’re supposed to be shaped like a small dish or tart shell. They can be filled or eaten plain; they have a nice almond-vanilla flavor.

 So that’s my round-up of favorite holiday foods. I’m currently looking forward to trying the chocolate fruitcake I ordered from Swiss Colony. Are you a good fruitcake, or a bad fruitcake? WSS.

Next, or perhaps next, because there might be some more music or movies to deal with first, will be some Christmas literature. But my hand hurts again, so that’s it for today.