Everyday life as the seasons change
Wintertime
About New Year's cookies and Speckendicken!
A cookbook lies in front of me. A small dedication greets me when I open it. "In memory of Christmas 1983!" your parents. I carefully turn the pages. Recipes from my home country have been summarized and recorded here. Now at the turn of the year I'm looking for two traditional dishes that are typical of East Frisia and are only prepared during this time.
Just before the turn of the year, I'll be in my kitchen and bake New Year's cakes. My job is to sit in the hot steam of the waffle iron and wait until a round waffle has formed from the dough blob. If it's baked through, I open the waffle maker, It has to go quickly, cause the biscuit can only be processed and formed into a roll for a few seconds. With a knife I loosen it from the hot iron, then throwing it on the table next to me and immediately start rolling it up. A somewhat painful affair, because the heat of the waffle iron is still in the cake circle. While the pain is still in my fingertips, I tell my grandchild about the time when I was sitting in the kitchen with my mother and also turning New Year's cakes. As I talk and deepen our conversation, I rub the hot iron with a piece of fat bacon before the next blob of dough covers the center. When the waffle iron is closed, it is forced into its round shape. The hot steam escapes again, which mixed in the scent of cinnamon and anise. While the fragrant cloud envelops us for a moment, my granddaughter grabs the first New Year's cookie. She nibbles with relish on the delicacy.
As I look at her like that, memories are awakened in me. I see myself as I always ate the first New Year's cookie as a child. I feel the calm that my mother always exuded and I start to smile inside. This tradition was also very important to her and the beautiful and intimate atmosphere that arose while baking together are associated with the pictures of that time. Even smells, feelings and closeness are merged in it and keep this memory alive.
So I would like to stick to this tradition, which has accompanied me since my childhood, and welcome the New Year with freshly baked New Year's cakes and the special syrup-bacon pancake.
New Year's cookies and bacon thicknesses accompany the turn of the year since my childhood.As with the New Year's cookies, the dough for the Speckendicken is prepared the day before. The dough needs time for rest before the syrup pancakes can be fried in the pan. Thereon are permanently sausage and bacon. This pancakes are also a good drinking basic for the New Year's Eve Party. So for me they are part of a tradition in my home country, which I also continue here in Bavaria. At first I was dependent on “sweeping packages” from East Frisia, but now I have found my sources to get the ingredients. While you can buy the finished speckendicken flour from us in Eastfrisia, I have to have the wheat crushed in a health food store.
I stand at the stove for a few hours on New Year's Eve day and roast the delicacy from my home. For my son, too, something would be missing if there wasn't a plate of fresh Speckendicken on the table.
For me it's the same like drinking tea in the Eastfrisian way. For me, these traditions are links to a bygone time, but to a world in which it is worth occasionally traveling.
