This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 14 and the prompt for today is Christmas pudding – if you could squeeze in just one more book for 2024.
I knew which book I was going to choose for this prompt a week ago, but I then started it yesterday so I have to pick a new one. Lucky I have a queue of books waiting for me. I therefore am going to choose A Secret Garden in Paris by Sophie Beaumont. I loved The Paris Cooking School when I read it last year!
Tomorrow's prompt is Mince pies – a little sweet something
A while ago now I bought a book called Advent by Anja Dunk which was an early selection of the Jamie Oliver Cookbook Club . Actually, the full title is Advent: Festive German Bakes to Celebrate the Coming of Christmas. So far, I am really loving this book which is separated into 24 different chapters (one for each day of Advent) with all different types of bakes for each chapter.
The author talks about a Bunter Teller which translates as "colourful plate" and in this context means a colourful plate of Advent biscuits. She talks about how every German household would have a stock of baked goods at this time of year for when visitors arrive, and you then put out a selection of biscuits, and perhaps give some as a gift.
Part of the reason why the book is broken into these 24 different chapters is that there would be a specific order in which you bake the colourful array of biscuits.
The order in which they are baked acts as a calendar; a countdown measured in biscuits. The butter-less biscuits, many of them old-fashioned varieties such as Lebkuchen, which keep the longest, are baked first, followed by nut biscuits, then macaroons and meringues. We bake butter-rich ones such as Vanillekipferl after all of the aforementioned, and finally the last things we make are all the sweets and truffles. The biscuit are usually stored in a towering stack of tins kept at the ready to plate a selection up whenever neighbours and friends pop round.
It's my kind of advent calendar, although not if I have to do ALL the cooking!!
As an idea, here are some of the different chapters. The second chapter is for several different versions of lebkuchen including how to make your own spice mix, lebkuchen hearts (filled and unfilled), old-fashioned honey lebkuchen and more.I have made a soft gingerbread biscuit several times previously which is inspired by lebkuchen. I tend to take them to work to share with my colleagues and they are always a hit! I shared this recipe a few years ago! They are honey and orange-y morsels of goodness! However, in this chapter, you will find the real deal.
Chapter 8 is all about Stollen, from full cakes to Stollen bites. Chapter 10 is full of spiced biscuits, from Spekulatius to the famous Pfeffernusse. Did you know that pferffernusse can actually be either white or brown. The difference is the kind of pepper that you use. I swear I have only ever seen the white version. Chapter 16 is all about meringues, including very sweet meringue mice and chapter 22 is all about marzipan sweets. There was an earlier chapter about marzipan biscuits too.
Throughout the book, the chapter divides are Christmassy lithographs which the author created herself, and all the photos are her own as this book was created during lockdowns. As I flick through the book there are so many things which look utterly delicious. There are cakes, biscuits, desserts and more. It's a lovely book! And the cover is gorgeous too. It has a fabric cover with gilded word and decorations, and a lovely yellow ribbon for a book mark. I do love it when a cookbook one of those!
What I will say, is that, maybe unsurprisingly, there are a lot of nut heavy recipes in this book, so if you have any allergies in your house maybe this might be an issue. The big guy, who used to be referred to as the little chef many years ago on this blog, has a tree nut allergy, but most of the time he won't eat what I bake anyway, so I can get away with it a bit! Just have to make sure he knows not to eat any of them.
I chose to make two recipes out of the chapter that is titled Makronen (macaroons). The first was Schokokusschen, which are chocolate kisses. In effect they are not dissimilar to chocolate meringue kisses although you do add in some flour. The other recipe I have made is Kokosmakronen- coconut macaroons, which are super simple to make! These should both keep for a couple of weeks in an airtight container!
Schcolkusschen (Anja Dunk) Chocolate Kisses
2 egg whites
90g soft light brown sugar
Pinch of fine sea salt
1/2 vanilla extract
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
1 tbsp plain (all-purpose) flour
Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan forced/350F and line a large baking parchment.
Put the egg whites into the bowl of a free-standing electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment (or use a mixing bowl and electric hand-held whisk) and whisk for a couple of minutes on high speed until stiff peaks form. Turn the speed down and add the sugar one tablespoon at a time, whisking all the while, until it is all incorporated and you have a glossy meringue. Now add the salt and vanilla extract and whisk for a further couple of seconds before adding the remaining ingredients. Whisk for a final 30 seconds so the flour and spices are incorporated.
Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm/ 3/8 inch star shaped nozzle. Alternatively, use a plastic freezer bag, which you have snipped the corner off to leave the same size opening.
Pipe little peaks of 1.5cm /1/2 inch diameter onto the sheet; they don't spread all that much so you only need a little space between each one.
Bake in the oven for 15-18 minutes until firm to the touch but not browned. Cocoa powder does have a tendency to burn easily, so make sure you check them after 15 minutes. The longer you leave them in the oven the crisper they will be.
Allow to cool completely on the sheet before storing in an airtight container, where they will keep well for up to a month.
Weekly meals
Saturday - egg and chips Sunday - Honey Pepper chicken Monday - Sausage mash beans and gravy Tuesday - Out for dinner Wednesday - Nothing Thursday -Baked Tuscan Chicken (new) Friday - Takeaway
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 12 and the prompt for today is Feast – a book that was magnificent
I struggled with this prompt a little bit. What makes a book magnificent? Is it noble characters, is it just a great reading experience. I ended up choosing Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See which has both!
Tomorrow's prompt is Christmas pudding – if you could squeeze in just one more book for 2024.
This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 12 and the prompt for today is Holly and Ivy – a book with great world building
Rightly or wrongly, I associate the term world building with fantasy and sci fi books, so I had a look at my list of books read this year. In the end I chose this one, Hogfather by Terry Pratchett, because I love the world that Pratchett has created in Discworld.
Yesterday, I talked about aural bliss when listening to Richard Armitage narrate Georgette Heyer, but this is pretty good as an audio experience too. It must be. I have listened to every year for the past four. This on is narrated mostly by Sian Clifford, but there are guest appearances by Bill Nighy and Serafinowicz as well!
Tomorrow's prompt is Feast – a book that was magnificent
This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 11 and the prompt for today is Mistletoe – a little bit of romance
Now, I read quite a bit of romance, so the question of whether this means a book with just a touch of romance or a full on one one took a bit of thought. In the end though, at the last minute I decided to go with an old school romance.
I listen to this book, Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, every couple of years because it is narrated by Richard Armitage. It is, to put it mildly, aural bliss. He also narrates Venetia, so maybe next year it will be that books turn for a re-listen.
Tomorrow's prompt is Holly and Ivy – a book with great world building
Even when I am trying to resist the lure of too many blog tours, there is one thing that will call me. Some days I am strong enough to resist, there are some days when I just can't. When I saw the blurb for this book, my resistance was very weak. How could I resist a road trip across France?
Lucie Marshal is flabbergasted when she receives an invite to her ex-husband's wedding to a much younger influencer. How very dare he! How on earth can he even afford such a lavish event, perfectly curated for social media, when she is still paying off the debts from their acrimonious split. There is no way that she is attending this wedding.
When Lucie and Miles split, she didn't just lose a husband, she lost her interior design business, her well to do lifestyle, and there are now very distinct cracks in her relationship with her daughter Zoe. She hasn't even met the man who is the father to her soon to be born grandchild. What did she gain? Well, some debt, life in a new town closer to her ailing dad, a car that is going to cost her a fortune to repair to make it roadworthy and not much more.
When there is a sudden train strike and all the flights are booked, Lucie's dad convinces her that she should take his old Jaguar and drive heavily pregnant Zoe to the wedding, and he will pay the costs. He also suggests to her that maybe she should try and live a little, have some fun along the way. And then her nephew Deva needs a lift too. Can anyone say road trip!
For Lucie, it would be best to just get to the wedding destination, drop Zoe and Deva off, and she can continue on to the little hotel by the sea that she has booked before making the return trip. Deva, however, is absolutely obsessed with all things Coco Chanel, and soon they are making deviations from the easy route, visiting Paris, the Auvergne region and more. I would not want to be driving a Jag into central Paris or some of the country roads in France!
Both Zoe and Deva have their own stories to be told during this road trip. Zoe's partner Rafi doesn't seem to want the same things as she does, and Deva's mother has very particular ideas of how he should live which don't equate with him living his best life!
I loved this book. I have never read Carmen Reid, but now she is on my list of authors that I have to read the backlists of! There was a lot going on in this book, what with all the events that happen as they drive across France, relationships to be repaired, with Deva taking ownership of who he really is, an influencer wedding where there is an unexpected guest and so much more. Carmen Reid does a great job of balancing the sad, the sweet, the funny moments, the joy and all the emotions in between.
I am sharing this review with the New Release Challenge hosted by The Chocolate Lady's Book Reviews. Be sure to check out other stops on the tour shown below. Thanks to the publisher, Netgalley and Rachel's Random Resources for the review copy.
Rating 4.5/5
About the book
Stuck in Second Gear
Divorced, Re-wedded. Survived....
Lucie Marshal is absolutely furious! How did she go from being a successful wife and mother to divorced, teetering on bankruptcy, and barely speaking to her grown-up daughter? Even worse, she’s just heard that her moronic ex-husband Miles is marrying a much younger woman in an influencer-style wedding in France #blessed #theone
Lucie will absolutely NOT be going. To hell with Miles, his new teeth, new hair and new wife! She’s perfectly fine...In fact, Lucie feels lost and angry almost all of the time. Just what happened to her younger, freer wild child self, who used to live life to the full?
But then pregnant daughter Zoe needs a lift... and eccentric nephew Deva needs a lift too and now Lucie has somehow agreed to drive her Dad’s beloved old Jag all the way across France to take them to her ex-husband’s wedding.
With a pitstop in Paris, a breakdown, unexpected passengers, and miles of open road, all set to Deva’s showtunes soundtrack – could this be the journey Lucie needs to find a way back to herself?
Carmen Reid is the bestselling author of numerous woman’s fiction titles including the Personal Shopper series starring Annie Valentine. After taking a break from writing she is back, introducing her hallmark feisty women characters to a new generation of readers. She lives in Glasgow with her husband and children. Social Media Links
This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 10 and the prompt for today is Under the Tree – a book you forgot you owned
I bought this book when I was visiting Shakespeare and Company in Paris a couple of years ago. I was cleaning off a table the other day when I came across it!
Tomorrow's prompt is Mistletoe – a little bit of romance
Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books to Read During a Storm (these can be cozy/comfy reads, books with storms in them, atmospheric reads for dark and stormy nights, light reads to combat the heavy weather, etc.) (Submitted by Astilbe.)
For my first three choices I thought I would share some books that have components of storms in the title. If there is a storm happening around you, there may be wind, there may be thunder and there may be rain. There could be other things, but let's start with those:
He Shall Thunder in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters - As a bonus this cover also has some lightning on it!
Ill Wind by Rachel Caine - Rachel Caine has a whole series of books called Weather Wardens where all the titles are weather related.
The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith - This is one of the Isabel Dalhousie which is set in Edinburgh, so I imagine you would need to be used to rain!
And now lets move onto books with stormy titles.
Flowers from the Stormby Laura Kinsale - A romance classic from the early 1990s!
Firestorm by Rachel Caine - This is another book in the Weather Wardens series.
Storm Front by Jim Butcher - Apparently I read this in 2008 and again in 2011 - who knew! I certainly didn't remember that!
The Night They Stormed Eureka by Jackie French - I recently started reading another Jackie French book but didn't get very far before I had to return the book to the library!
Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley - Never miss an opportunity to get a Susanne Kearsley book into the a TTT post!
A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin - this is the third book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, more commonly known as the Game of Thrones books.
The Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley - The second book in the Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley. I am currently listening to the seventh book in the series.
This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 8 and the prompt for today isFairy Lights – something magical
I have chosen to feature The Anywhere Hotel by Gisele Stein. This book was one that surprised me when I read it earlier in the year. The story revolves around The Anywhere Hotel, which is a portal to ....anywhere. You just have to pick up an item and it will take you to that place. For example, if you pick up an Eiffel Tower keyring it will take you to Paris! It was a fun read!
Tomorrow's prompt is Under the Tree – a book you forgot you owned
Before I jump into my normal what I'm reading, watching and doing post, I wanted to share that the 2025 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge is ready to go.
If you love historical fiction, or if you would like to read some historical fiction in the hope that you will find some books to love, or if you love reading challenges, we would love to have you join us!
This week I didn't really get as much liked as I would have. I finished The Silver-Haired Sisterhood by Judy Leigh, which is another book set on the Isle of Skye. I seem to be reading quite a few of them at the moment. You can find my review here.
I then read Starting Over at Starlight Cottage by Debbie Viggiano who is a new author to me! I reviewed that book here.
Currently I am reading Stuck in Second Gear by another new to me author, Carmen Reid. This one features a roadtrip through France which I am very much enjoying, and my review will be up later this week.
I finished doing my annual listen to Hogfather by Terry Pratchett! Even though I have listened to it multiple times there are still things that I remember and other things that I do not!
I have now gone back to listening to The Missing Sister by Lucinda Riley.
It was our final meeting for our read-on-a-theme book club on Saturday so we had a lunch instead of our customary meeting. Everything was delicious, and not just the food. The theme for this selection was food/cooking. Here are just some of the choices that we shared.
I thought I was being a bit clever as suggesting 25 as our next theme. I was thinking people could read a book from when they were 25, or that was published 25 years ago, or the 25th book in a series, but it might actually be a bit tricky. I have chosen a book now, but it did take some searching to find the book that I wanted to read.
If I didn't get as much reading done as I would like, I did get a lot more watched than I have been in previous weeks.
The latest season of Great British Bake Off started here last week. I also watched a couple of the festive specials.
We binged watch two shows. The first was Muster Dogs: Where Are They Now. A couple of years ago now we watched the first season of Muster Dogs, which is when they took a group of Kelpie puppies and sent them off to be trained. At the end of the year they came back together and did a series of tests to work out which the best dog/trainer combination was. Last year, in the second season, they did the same experiment with a litter of Border Puppies. This season was to go back to see how some of the dogs and their owners/families are doing. It's such a delightful show.
The second show we binged was A Man on the Inside which stars Ted Danson as a man who goes undercover in a retirement village to solve a crime! It was so good! We loved it!
We also finished watching Shogun, which I thought was really good but it did take us a while to get through as it is not a show that I could watch more than one or two episodes at a time.
I watched several Christmas movies this week. I loved one, like another a lot, and had a don't waste your time reaction to the third.
The one that I loved was That Christmas, which is an animated movie written by Richard Curtis, who is famous for a lot of big movies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually. It was so sweet.
I liked The Text Before Christmas, which follows a woman who receives a wrong number call very close to Christmas from an older woman, and they build a relationship which leads them to spending several Christmases together. And she has a dishy son and so on.
Finally, we like British comedian Jack Whitehall and we are even going to seem him live in a few months. However, his Christmas special, Jack in Time for Christmas, is ....not good. It does have a funny part with Michael Buble right at the beginning but it all goes downhill after that.
I did go to the movies this week. I was going a little bit stir crazy from being at home, or maybe from so many Christmas movies. I chose to go and see an Iranian movie called My Favourite Cake. I will confess that I thought it was going to be more foodie than it was, but it was interesting, and the story about the movie was very interesting. It is about an older woman who has been a widow for many years, who decides that she needs to meet a man, but it all goes a bit wrong!
Here's the trailer for That Christmas
Posts from the last week
It's been a very busy blogging week this week, mainly because I am participating in Countdown to 2025 which means a post for that everyday, plus whatever else I am posting.
This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 8 and the prompt for today isBaubles – these add some colour, a very colourful and striking cover
I have chosen to feature Jessica Redland's A New Dawn at Owl's Lodge which is a very colourful cover!
Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.
This month's starting point is Sandwich by Catherine Newman.
I thought I would do things a little bit differently this month. Whereas normally this is an exercise in word and thought association. This time, I am going to make....a sandwich
When you are making a sandwich you need to start with bread. In this case, I am choosing a collection of short stories called Bread and Chocolate by Philippa Gregory. I had completely forgotten about this book until I recently revisited the first few book reviews I ever wrote and this was one of them.
Next, I am going to add Butter by Asako Yuzuki
I then need to decide what protein. Will it be ham, or turkey or something else. Maybe chicken, using the book Mr Chicken Goes to Paris by Leigh Hobbs. I read this book many years ago to my nephews when we were visiting the State Library and I have never forgotten it.
Next up tomatoes. I am choosing Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe by Fannie Flagg, although I probably wouldn't normally fry them!
The next filling was a little trickier. In the end I have chosen a book about Lettice Knollys, cousin and rival to Queen Elizabeth I. I first read about her in high school in a book called My Enemy, the Queen by Victoria Holt, which is a pseudonym of the prolific author Jean Plaidy.
The final link was even trickier. If I was making a chicken, lettuce and tomato sandwich I would want to add mayonaisse, but there aren't many books where this fits. I am therefore choose a book that was co-written by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (Mayer/mayo is close right?) called Agnes and the Hitman.
So there you have it, my chicken, lettuce and tomato sandwich!
Next month, which will also be next year (!!!) the starting point is Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which is a new book to me.
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