Ready, steady, cook! MEINRAD’s favourite Christmas recipes

MEINRAD are more than just translation experts – we’re also keen bakers, and at Christmas there’s little we love more than tucking in to what we’ve made. To prove it, here are three Christmas recipes which we hope will have you feeling just as Christmassy as us!

For many people, Christmas is a time for reflection and relaxation, when we can forget about the stress of our everyday lives, enjoy spending time with our loved ones, and look back fondly on our best memories of the year gone by.And what better way to do that than with a few Christmas treats – after all, it is the most wonderful (and delicious) time of the year! So to make your Christmas even sweeter, we at MEINRAD have chosen our three favourite seasonal recipes to share with you. We hope you have fun making them!

Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars)

Image: © Christine Rainer

We’ll start with a biscuit recipe, because we’re confident that when it comes to having a wide variety of Christmas biscuits, Austria leads the way. Christmas biscuits are small, tasty treats you can enjoy throughout Advent – and every bite will make you feel a bit more Christmassy.We took a long time to decide which recipe to share with you, and eventually we picked Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars).They don’t just taste and look great: they’re also very easy to make, so they’re the ideal way to de-stress in the kitchen after a hectic working day.

Ingredients:

The list of ingredients for our Zimtsterne is surprisingly short. All you need is:

• 250g ground almonds
• 125g icing sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• a little zest
• 1 egg white (medium)
• 1 tablespoon rum
• 1 teaspoon Amaretto

For the glaze, you’ll also need:

• 120g icing sugar
• 1 egg white (medium)

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients for the biscuits and knead until you have a smooth dough. You can do this by hand or with a mixer (or a Thermomix, if you’ve got one of these fancy new kitchen gadgets – approximately 40 seconds at level 5).
2. Spread some ground almonds on a work surface, roll out the dough so that it’s about 1cm thick, and use a cutter to create the star shapes.
3. Put the stars on a baking tray lined with baking paper and pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees.
4. For the glaze, cream the icing sugar and the egg white in the mixer (or the Thermomix).
5. Coat each star with the glaze (we recommend using a teaspoon to do this).
6. Bake the Zimtsterne for 12-15 minutes on the bottom shelf of the oven.
   Note: Don’t bake for too long, otherwise the egg white will turn brown. So keep an eye on them in the oven!

Mulled wine

Image: © Luisa Ehrenreich

Is there anything better than savouring a mug of mulled wine at Christmas with your loved ones, perhaps while munching a few tasty Christmas biscuits as well? We don’t think so! So here’s our favourite mulled wine recipe – hopefully it’ll give you the same warm feeling that we get when we drink it. And don’t worry: you don’t have to go outside to feel the benefit. This mulled wine is just as comforting in the warmth of your own home.

Ingredients:

This list of ingredients for our mulled wine might look quite long at first glance, but we promise it’s worth putting them all in! You’ll need:

• 0.75l red wine (to suit your tastes – it can be dry or fresh and fruity)
• 0.4l orange juice
• 0.3l water
• 2-3 cinnamon sticks
• 1 apple
• 1 orange 
• 1 lemon
• Sugar to taste (we always use brown cane sugar, but white sugar works too)
• 2 packets of vanilla sugar
• Optional: one packet each of lemon sugar and cinnamon sugar

You can buy a ready-made mulled wine spice mix or make your own. For making your own spice mix, you’ll need:

• 5 star anise
• 5 cardamom pods
• 10 cloves

Method:

1. Pour the red wine, orange juice and water into a large pan and warm it up.
2. Rinse the orange and lemon under hot water and dry them. Grate the peel and add it to the pan.
   Note: Make sure you only peel the outermost layer and not the white inner layer, as this has a bitter taste!
3. Now either add the ready-made mulled wine spice mix or crush the star anise, the cardamom pods and the cloves in a mortar and then add them to the pan.
   You can add the spices to the pan without crushing them if you like – though you’ll then have to pour the mulled wine through a sieve before you drink it.
4. Add the cinnamon sticks to the pan.
5. Cut the apple and orange into slices and add them to the pan.
6. Roll the lemon on a work surface while pushing firmly down, squeeze out the juice and add it to the pan (rolling the lemon helps you get more juice out of it).
7. Then add the vanilla sugar, plus the lemon sugar and cinnamon sugar – the latter two are optional, but they make the mulled wine taste even better.
8. Finally, add sugar to taste.
9. Heat the mulled wine to 70-80 degrees, but don’t bring it to the boil as this will boil away the alcohol.
10. Turn off the heat, cover the mulled wine and let it steep so that the flavours can develop.
11. Then warm it up again and serve! But pour it through a sieve first to catch the spices.

Lebkuchenguglhupf cake

Image: © Christine Rainer

If you haven’t yet come up with the perfect dessert for your Christmas dinner, or if you simply fancy a Christmas cake during Advent, our third recipe is just the thing! Our Lebkuchenguglhupf – yes, it’s a long and complicated name! – combines a staple of Christmas in the German-speaking world (Lebkuchen, a kind of gingerbread) with a traditional Austrian cake (Guglhupf), and it’s bound to be the star of the show at Christmas dinner.

Ingredients:

Our Lebkuchenguglhupf cake recipe has a few more ingredients, but you’ll definitely have many of them at home already. And trust us: the results are worth it! You’ll need:

• 4 eggs
• 130g sugar
• 1 packet of vanilla sugar
• 200ml eggnog
• 200ml taste-free oil
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 15g Lebkuchengewürz (gingerbread spice) 
• 120g cornflour
• 120g flour
• 120g instant cocoa
• 1 packet of baking powder

Method:

1. Cream the eggs with the sugar and vanilla sugar.
2. Pour in the eggnog and oil and continue mixing.
3. Add and stir in the cinnamon, gingerbread spice, cornflour and flour.
4. Transfer the dough to a greased and floured ring cake tin (22cm diameter) and bake for about 50 minutes at 180 degrees.

Those are MEINRAD’s three favourite Christmas recipes! We hope you enjoy making them as much as we do and that they give you a flavour of a traditional Austrian Christmas.

Merry Christmas from the MEINRAD team!

PS: Speaking of teams – fancy a bit more? If you’re looking for even more tasty recipes, take a look at Kuchenglück und Germgeschehen, the baking blog from our keen baker Christine. She regularly posts delicious new recipes which you simply have to try!

Main image: © Adobe Stock