Gingerbread

Every year, in December we make gingerbread snowflakes. It started  years ago when we received snowflake cookie cutters as a gift, and has now become our Christmas tradition. This year though, I hesitated.

I had already bought the ingredients. A task that saw me standing in the supermarket picking up one type of sugar, and then another, trying to figure out which one was most likely to resemble the soft brown sugar available in Australia. Last year, I used cassonade; it had the right flavour but was too granular. This year, I opted for vergeoise, which was the right consistency, but lacked the rich flavour of brown sugar.

With the ingredients in hand, I had second thoughts. Our kitchen is insanely cold at the moment, and the oven function on our combination microwave isn’t quite up to the job of baking.

But, the biscuits have become a tradition, and they really are delicious. So, I put my excuses aside, and made them anyway. I now have the pleasure of sipping my coffee, with gingerbread on the side, as I write this.