Christmas Breakfast

I had a lovely Christmas breakfast of Jule Kaga and Stollen. It was perfect with a cup of extra creamy coffee. 

Jule Kaga

Christmas is not Christmas without Jule Kaga. Every year my Grandma Alice would make Jule Kaga for Christmas morning. Well Grandma is gone now, so my mother and I take turns making it. It was my turn this year. Grandma used a basic recipe from one of her old cookbooks and modified it to be Jule Kaga. Below is basically the recipe that she used with my small changes in brackets.

Grandma Alice’s Jule Kaga

1 cup Milk (scalded)

1 cup Water

½ cup Sugar

Add to above lukewarm liquid:

1 package Quick Acting Yeast [I use 2 ½ tsp.]

Stir and add:

1 cup flour to make sponge

Let stand ½ hour or until raised light; add

½ t. salt

12 cardamom seeds (shelled and pulverized in corner of a clean cloth) [I use 1 tsp.]

½ cup softened shortening [I used butter.]

3 eggs

Beat and add:

5 to 51/2 cup flour, or enough to make a soft dough.

Let rise till double in bulk; knead in 1 cup of citron and 1 cup of golden raisins and let rise again till light. Divide dough in half. Make each half into braids. Put in greased bread tins or make round braids into pie tins. Let rise till light. Bake in moderate oven 350° for 30 to 35 min. Allow to cool.

When cool make a thick butter cream frosting. Frost and decorate with red and/or green candied cherries.

Christmas Cookies

This year I tried to limit the number of Christmas cookies that I made. I am not sure that I succeeded. I started with a plan to only make some cookies from “The Finnish Cookbook” by Beatrice A. Ojakangas. She has a basic cookie dough recipe that can be changed to make various types of cookies. One recipe of the dough can make four different cookies. I made Nut Cookies, Aunt Hannah’s Cookies, Anise Cookies and Egg Rings from the dough. By far the most popular cookie, of these four, was the Egg Rings. I think I will make those again next year and maybe try some of the other variations.

At this point I also made some Gingersnaps. What I like about Gingersnaps is that I can make the dough up early and keep it in the freezer. This way I can bake a dozen or so whenever I need some cookies. I love this recipe that I found on the Kitch’n blog. It has a nice spicy flavor. I baked a few of these up for Christmas, but I have the rest stashed in the freezer for later in the year.

Then I decided to make English Toffee. I used this great sounding recipe, unfortunately this did no work out so well. My plan was to cut the recipe in half, because we did not need two pounds of English Toffee in the house. The first batch I made I put in too much water and I lowered the heat too much. The results were edible, but not toffee. The second batch was better, but something happened to the chocolate and it all separated from the toffee! Oh well, it was still tasty.

I thought I would be done at this point, but then realized that I had not made any of the traditional cookies. So the question at this point was Krumkake or Rosettes? I decided on Krum Kake because I did not want to mess with hot oil for the Rosettes. I ended up making two batches of these as well. The first batch was plain and the second batch was chocolate. They went over well, but next year I have to make Rosettes. My niece was a bit put out that I had not made them. I told her that next year we would make them together. That will be fun!

From the top clockwise and then into the center: Aunt Hanna's Cookies, Ginger Snaps, English Toffee, Egg Rings, Chocolate Krum Kake, Anise Cookies (the diamond shaped ones) and Nut Cookies.