Baking, A Burn and Following Your Dreams Against All Odds

Dec 23, 2024

A quick hello from the in-between time of the holidays. I come to you with wisps of flour dust on my sleeves and the scent of Lebkuchen lingering in my hair, because these are my baking days. During the holidays I like to make an elaborate cookie list and then cross my fingers that I’ll find the time to tick them all off. I’m more ambitious than I am organized.

❄︎ Here’s what my 2024 Christmas Cookie List looks like:

From my Austrian side:

❏ Lebkuchen Stars — which are kind of like gingerbread stars but with a bit more of a cake-ier consistency. I’ve been using this recipe for three years in a row now, and they always turn out yummy and with the exact texture I like my Lebkuchen to be.

❏ Vanillekipferl — which always stress me out, because they’re traditionally made with no egg and rely solely on butter to bind them. Rolling and then shaping them into little moons isn’t always the easiest, but they melt in your mouth and taste delicious and remind me of Austria, so I never leave them off the list.

From my Indian side:

❏ Bebinca — which is stresses me out even more than the Vanillekipferl. It’s an elaborate Christmas sweet, but by far my favourite one to make. The sweet comes from Goa, a state in India (my mother’s heritage), and is made with eggs, sugar, flour, coconut milk and nutmeg. It has seven layers, which all need to be individually baked. The whole process takes three hours on a good day. Phew! I’ll usually make two or even three Bebincas a season, because something or other will go wrong, and I’m a perfectionist. This year we had an accident making one of them, which involved uneven layers and a second degree burn to a large portion my upper arm. But all is well. I survived, persevered, and the baking continues.

From the New York Times Cookie Week:

❏ Matcha Cookies — I’m trying these for the first time this year.

❏ Dirty Chai Earthquake Cookies — they’re a regular on my list and my son’s favourite.

And because a cookie list has to include at least one chocolate cookie, I’ve decided to go with:

❏ Holiday Chocolate Crinkle Cookies — these are the ones I’m trying this time.

In between all the baking, I’m working my way through two books. The first one is:

❄︎ Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

I’m a little late to the game on this one. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while now, and the moment felt right for a literary novel exploring the portrait of a marriage told from both sides.

The second one is:

❄︎ The Virgin’s Promise by Kim Hudson

which is a book on the story structure of the heroine’s journey as opposed to the classic hero’s journey. If you’re writing a novel or screenplay on female transformation, I highly recommend giving this book a read.

Last but not least, to end off the year, I’d love to share a short film I discovered via kottke.org about following your dreams even when the conditions seem impossible.

❄︎ Then Comes The Body directed by Jacob Krupnick.

It’s about a small ballet school called The Leap of Dance Academy in Lagos, which gained international attention after a video of its students dancing in the rain went viral. The school’s founder, Daniel Ajala, saw the lack of any sort of ballet training in his community. Inspired by the film Save The Last Dance and entirely self-taught in ballet himself, he decided to open his own dance school. It opened on September 9th, 2017, with only five students.