Oh, Vienna! (From Living Northeast)

Oh, Vienna!

12:12pm Monday 30th November 2009 in

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Have yourself a continental Christmas with some Viennese festive treats, says Maxine Gordon.

ANITA Tasker spent childhood Christmases in Vienna with her Austrian grandparents, savouring a very different experience from her English friends at school. “We celebrated on Christmas Eve with a huge feast for all the family, then we’d open the presents,” recalls Anita, 57.

Her grandmother ran a bakery in central Vienna, so the festive table was laden with the likes of stollen and gingerbread houses – which Anita loved helping to make.

Pride of place during the festivities was a huge Tannenbaum fir tree decorated with real candles, gingerbread biscuits and tangerines studded with cloves and secured with a single red ribbon.

Fish was always served for the Christmas Eve feast – which upset the young Anita. “My grandfather had a concrete pool in his garden where he kept fish. Each summer, he’d get a man to fish him a huge carp out of the Danube, then fatten it up in his garden pool in time for Christmas. In the summer, I’d get in the pool and stroke it. When he killed it, I was heartbroken.”

Anita remembers fondly other elements of her Austrian Christmases, particularly the markets, where everybody would sample the finest gingerbreads and gluhwein. Beautiful gingerbread houses would be on display and strings of spiced fruits, wrapped with cinnamon sticks, would be on sale.

This Christmas, Anita will bring the flavour of her childhood to Ryedale, where she will sell a collection of Continental treats from her bakery and tearoom, Pattacakes, at Welburn, near Castle Howard.

Hand-made mince pies, Yule logs and giant chocolate cakes covered in marzipan will be on sale alongside gingerbread houses and biscuits for decorating the tree.

Mini fruit cakes wrapped in marzipan and chocolate and decorated like a Christmas pudding will also tempt customers, as will Anita’s authentic Austrian stollen.

This bread-cum-cake, filled with marzipan, is the Continental equivalent of the fruit cake we traditionally eat at Christmas, says Anita. It has a long history, she added, dating back to the 15th Century. “Originally, stollen came from Dresden and it signified the swaddling of baby Jesus; the marzipan representing the baby.

Over time, it has become sweeter and sweeter and it is something that is eaten over the Christmas period.”

Anita opened Pattacakes in May, after spending several years selling her wares at farmers’ markets across the region. She learned the art of cake making and patisserie as a child from watching her grandmother, who had people lining up every day outside her bakery in central Vienna to buy her pastries and strudel.

“I was shipped out in the holidays and was to be found either at the kitchen sink or doing some menial task. I was used as an unpaid slave, but little did I know that I would absorb it all and grow to love it,” says Anita.

Pattacakes is rapidly gaining a reputation as selling some of the finest cakes and breads in the region – all made on the premises by Anita and her colleague Anita Brown.

Firm favourites include vanilla slices, meringue roulade, New York-style baked cheesecake, Battenburg and frangipane as well as carrot cake, coffee and walnut or chocolate gateau. Best sellers include brownies, flapjacks and caramel shortbread.

A snack and lunch menu is also available, as is a range of fine Italian coffee. Also on sale are pasties and takeaway sandwiches and milk, cheese and hams from local producers, as well as other staples such as pasta, tea and jams.

In opening Pattacakes, Anita revived Welburn’s one and only village shop and bucked a national trend that has seen local shops fold at a staggering rate. She is dedicated to selling the best of local produce at decent prices. “We want to support local artisans and sell local produce to local people without the huge mark-up,” said Anita. “A lot of people don’t know what we make in Yorkshire.

We sell local butter, milk, cheese and eggs as well as flour milled in the Wolds.”

With her Continental roots and her passion for quality Yorkshire fare, Anita is serving up the best of both worlds.

■ Pattacakes, Main Street, Welburn, YO60 7DX.

Tel: 01653-618352. Open: Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm, weekends 10am to 4pm.

CHRISTMAS STOLLEN

This recipe will make four good-sized stollen, or you can divide this recipe by four to make just one. You will need a nice warm kitchen!

For the dough

1kg strong white flour

20g fresh yeast (you can buy this at any supermarket bakery department)

500g fresh full milk warmed in the microwave or on the stove to just lukewarm

200g unsalted butter

50g caster sugar

10g salt

4 large eggs

400g marzipan either white or yellow

500g almond cream (recipe follows)

For the filling:

Almond cream

Beat together with a whisk or by hand until light and fluffy:

125g unsalted butter

125g caster sugar

125g ground almonds

25g plain flour

slosh of rum and grated zest of half lemon 2 eggs

This will keep in the fridge for a week in a sealed container.

Fruit filling

Try and soak all your fruit for a few days in some rum.

180g sultanas

100g glace cherries

200g mixed peel

60g toasted flaked almonds

4 tbsp rum

teaspoon cinnamon

You will also need about 400g of marzipan

METHOD

Place flour in a bowl and crumble in your yeast then add your warmish milk, eggs and butter, salt and sugar and knead to a soft dough – this will feel very sticky but try to resist adding more flour to your hands. The longer you knead, the more supple the dough becomes.

It will take approximately ten minutes unless you have a mixer.

Cover dough and leave to rise in warm kitchen for about 1½ hours. When well risen, flour your hands and knead the dough again and, while doing so, add all your dried fruit and keep kneading until all your fruit is in the dough.

Form a ball and leave again for about and hour to rise. When well risen for the second time, once again flour your hands and roll out your dough to look like a flat dinner plate.

Cover the whole of your flat dough with your almond cream. Roll your marzipan into a sausage shape and lay in the middle of your dough.

Fold half the dough over the marzipan, and the other half over the dough. It should now look like a loaf of bread with a hump in the middle.

Squeeze all the ends together to tidy it all up and place on a baking sheet to rise again for the third time (approx ½ hour).

Beat an egg, add a little milk and carefully brush the whole of the stollen dough with the egg wash.

Place in a preheated oven 170°C and bake for approximately 30 to 35 minutes. When your stolen has a nice golden colour, take it out of the oven and turn it over and tap its bottom. I should sound hollow and also be nicely browned on the bottom as well.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Melt 100g unsalted butter, add a slosh of rumand brush over your stollen over and over again until it is well soaked, then dust liberally with icing sugar, when it is completely cooled you can cling film it and keep it in a tin. It will keep well for about three weeks.

“If you get stuck with anything just give us a call at the shop or pop down we will be glad to show you how to do it,” says Anita.

GINGERBREAD BISCUITS

YOU can buy some Christmas biscuit cutters from all major supermarkets or online to make fun shapes, says Anita. “This is a great recipe to do with your children as the dough is great for re-rolling if you don’t get the shape quite right.”

Ingredients

175g plain flour

¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda

pinch salt

2tsp mixed spice

65g unsalted butter cut into pieces

75g caster sugar

2 tbsp golden syrup

1 egg yolk, beaten

Method

Sift together flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spices. Rub butter into the flour until mix resembles breadcrumbs, add sugar, syrup and egg yolk and mix to a firm dough.

Leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour wrapped in clingfilm or a plastic bag. Your dough is now ready to roll out.

Now is a good time to turn on your oven to have it nice and hot ready for your biscuits: 350/180 electricity or Gas 4.

Try not to roll out too thinly otherwise you may find your biscuit shapes difficult to manage. Roll out to about the thickness of two pound coins put together.

If the dough is a little sticky, flour your hands and the work surface before you roll out.

When you have cut your shapes, lay them on your baking sheet so they are not touching as they grow a little in the hot oven. They will take approximately 12 to 15 minutes to bake.

When golden, take them out of the oven and carefully lift them on to a cooling rack to harden. Be very gentle with them as they are still soft at this stage. When completely cold they are ready for icing. Icing

1 tbsp lightly beaten egg white

1 tsp lemon juice

3-4oz icing sugar, sifted

Mix all ingredients until you have a nice icing and either brush or pour over your biscuits, leave to dry then store in an airtight tin… if you can leave them alone long enough!