Baking Christmas gifts sounds so much better in theory

I decided to bake holiday gifts this year.

In true procrastinator’s mode, that is – after Christmas.

“This is more like a New Year’s gift, so baking Christmas cookies are
out,” I mused. “What about nisu?”

Nisu – Finnish coffee bread – is the closest I get to ethnic cooking or baking. My grandmothers both made a version, and my mom, in her late eighties, still cranks out the occasional batch. The braided loaves, flavored with cardamom and encrusted in a light sugar glaze, are perfect with jam, toasted or untoasted. The
cinnamon rolls are melt-in-your-mouth tender.

Growing up, I remember my mom cracking open the cardamom pods and pounding out the seeds in the basement. The scent exploded from the crushed spice; it was a magnificent, heady, unmistakable smell – at once tangy and sweet, layer upon layer of nose-tickling mystery. (As a baffling side note, cardamom is mainly used in Indian and Scandinavian cooking. Go figure.)

The cardamom I bought was pod-free, but still needed to be
crushed. At first, I tried my food processor, but the teaspoon of seeds just whirled around, well out of the blades’ reach. So I put the seeds in a plastic bag, found a hammer, and went to town.

So far, so good. The kitchen smelled like my mom’s, and my 8-year-old got a turn smacking the heck out of a bag of seeds.
Things were going swimmingly…until it was time for the yeast.

Note: My nisu recipe is a transcription of my mom talking me through the process over the phone. While quaint, this is not always the best or most accurate way to approach baking.

“Scald the milk,” read my scribbled handwriting. “Then add the
yeast.”

Here’s what I forget, every five years or so I try to bake nisu: Yeast has a mind of its own. And it’s delicate; you can kill it with temperatures that are too hot or too cold.

“Scald” sounded hot. So stupidly, I overcooked the yeast. The dough didn’t rise, not a whit.

Pig-headed, I carried on with the baking, despite the fact that my loaves were like lumps of densely-packed, solid clay. “Maybe they’ll rise in the oven,” I said, in full denial mode. I wasn’t giving up on this batch of bread, darn it.

Baked, they weighed about 10 pounds each. Which would have been great for using as door stops or free weights, but altogether unappealing for eating.

“You win some, you lose some,” I said, dumping them sadly into the garbage can, trying to salvage a life lesson for my daughter, who had mixed and kneaded the misbehaving dough with me.

“Let’s make another batch,” she said, completely undeterred.

And so we did. I kept the milk just slightly warm this time, the dough rose, and the loaves were beyond delicious. So good, in fact, that we ended up gobbling up every bite within a day.

I still didn’t have any New Year’s gifts to give anyone. Maybe we’ll try baking again next month – just in time for Valentine’s Day.

 

 

_____________________________________________________________________
If you require a high quality printout of this article, just click on the printer symbol next to ’Share and enjoy’, and we will do the rest. This site is hosted by (click on the graphic for more information)

Return from baking to Home Page

If you want to increase your site popularity and gain thousands of visitors – check out these sites THEY ARE FREE. Spanishchef more than doubled its ‘New Visitors’ last month simply by signing up to these sites:




Follow spanishchef.net on TWITTER