Germany: Holiday non-traditions

This week I got an e-mail from my uncle inquiring about German holiday traditions. Apparently my nine-year-old (soon to be ten-year-old) cousin is working on a class project that involves researching the food and desserts of her heritage. Me being an advocate of education, food (especially desserts) and different cultures, helping her was right up my alley.

Given that - as noted before - my family is made up of bad Germans, we didn't really have any cultural holiday traditions. So I turned to some of my German friends for answers. It then only seemed appropriate to make a virtual return to the homeland to blog about it.

The first person I hit up was one of my editors who lived in Germany for a few years. He suggested something I later learned is a Feuerzanger Bowle, which involves heating red wine and traditional holiday spices in a fondue-like pot. Sounds like a pretty good idea, but perhaps not appropriate for an elementary school holiday celebration. (Although, I'd be amused to score an invite to that party and write a story about it.)

I then turned to my friend Nina, who was born in Germany, for some more kid-appropriate suggestions. She came through big time with some of her holiday favorites.

Without further ado ...

Stollen: This appears to be a yeast bread filled with nuts, currants, etc. Kind of like a fruit cake, I guess. And what do you know, Food Network gives us this recipe from Sara Moulton's old show. (I actually met Sara Moulton on one occasion ... this was before my current heyday of stalking celebrity chefs. We'll save that story for another blog posting).

Springerle: These are anise flavored sugar cookies made with molds to create intricate impressions on them.

Brat Apfel: Baked apples. Pretty self explanatory. Some of the "recipes" I found for baking apples involve serving them with ice cream, caramel or cinnamon.

Lebkuchen: Cookie (apparently Germans like cookies) similar to gingerbread, but softer. The Internet abounds with recipes.

And of course, Germans can be credited with coming up with Advent calendars, the Christmas tree and gingerbread houses (in the spirit of Hansel and Gretel).

I guess that means we weren't terrible Germans. We did do all of that. In fact, we used to go over to my Grandma's house when we were little and decorate a little gingerbread house. And last year, my sister decided to resurrect this tradition and we did a house on Christmas with Grandma. The difference is now my sister and her boyfriend take their cookie baking and gingerbread house making quite seriously, a warning to Bobby Flay if he ever comes around looking for a Throwdown.