Christmas confections
GREENWICH BAKERIES OFFER EUROPEAN INSPIRED HOLIDAY FAVORITES
Ican’t find plum pudding in Greenwich. I want a pudding like the one made for years by the Round Hill Guild and sold at its Christmas bazaar. Sure, there are lots of prepackaged versions but none have the Guild’s powerhouse of flavors. It always packed a little punch due to the amount of brandy used. Plum pudding is often associated with the charming days of yore in England, with Christmas crackers, paper crowns and Bob Cratchit. I loved it.
While there isn’t a British bakery in Greenwich that makes plum pudding — every bakery makes Christmas cookies — there are other specialty bakers in town who, during Noël festivities, create confections that remind them of their ancestral homes. Like Herb Mueller of the Black Forest Bakery on Lewis Street. Scion of the German couple who founded the bakery in 1982, Mueller said he bakes “literally hundreds” of Germany’s nod to fruit bread, the stollen, every Christmas season.
Stollen is a national star in Germany. Just before Christmas Day in the old town of Dresden in front of the cathedral, a giant stollen weighing about three tons is laid out on a gaily festooned carriage pulled by horses. A band in colorful vintage attire heralds the approach of this stollen king, which is later cut and sold to the thousand or so people gathered in the square. The money is contributed to charities.
Mueller has never been to this Christmas festival but he celebrates it with his own recipe for the festive bread. He says that there are so many layers to the recipe that the process can be daunting. It all begins when he starts marinating dried raisins and cranberries, later adding candied orange peel and rum, lots of butter and some yeast and nuts. The dough is poured into special molds imported from Germany, brushed with melted butter and the next day brushed again with butter and cinnamon sugar and finally dusted with powdered sugar. The process takes all day to make one batch.
So does the panettone at DiMare Pastry Shop in Riverside and Stamford. A quintessential Italian Christmas sweet bread flush with dried citrus fruit, lots of eggs and raisins, panettone is traditionally served with a glass of champagne after the dinner dishes have been washed and the men of the family have taken their naps (at least in my Italian family).
In 1976 Italian native Ugo DiMare opened his bakery in Greenwich. Today, his daughters Sabrina and Maria run the business. For the holidays, they will have struffoli, a Neapolitan delicacy of marble-size balls of dough drenched in honey, and anginette, which are eggshaped lemon anise cookies. Also cassata, a glamorous ricotta cake laced with rum and candied fruit.
Maria admits she much prefers another dessert entirely, one not usually associated with the season. “My favorite dessert for Christmas is the profiterole,” she admits. “Ours is a chantilly filled creampuff smothered in chocolate ganache shaped like a tree.”
More Italian sweets for the holidays are to be found at Il Pastaficio in Cos Cob. The shop is known for its pastas and sauces and absolutely decadent tiramisu. Come Christmastime, it offers some unusual Italian desserts for happy holiday enjoyment. Owner Federico Perandin will showcase his apple strudel and panettone ripieno imported from Italy that Perandin fills with mascarpone cream.
I had given up finding the syrupy cherries in their famous blue and white ceramic jars of the Fabbri family that my mother always had on hand during this merry time of the year. Then I discovered them at Il Pastaficio. The wild cherries’ sweet/sour notes temper the richness of cheesecake. Add one to a glass of Prosecco or ladle a bit over panna cotta. Another specialty here, one that can be enjoyed all year round but will definitely make it to my tiered cookie stand this December, is salame al cioccolato. It looks startlingly like a salami. Sold by the slice, it’s a simple marriage of chocolate and cookies.
Speaking of chocolate, what could be more sensational than the French celebratory salute to the season, the bûche de noël. Marc Parvenne of Bistro V and MeliMelo on Greenwich Avenue is already taking orders for his interpretation of this classic at his pâtisserie. Diners have a hard time bypassing the bakery’s display case at the entrance of the café without buying a tart or two. Parvenne and his wife Evelyne have long been familiar to local residents ever since they started working in the original bistro in 1990.
For centuries, it was customary on Christmas Eve for people in many European countries to bring home a very large piece of firewood that would be placed in the hearth, where it would burn over several days. People believed its ashes would protect the home from lightning and evil spirits. When stoves replaced the large hearths, an edible version was created and became particularly associated with Christmas over the years. It’s elegant, sophisticated and best left to Parvenne to create for you.
Traditionally, the cake is rolled. Parvenne’s version is unusual: It’s rolled and layered. He begins with three layers of sponge cake and bakes them in three different sizes with chocolate, praline or coffee flavors. One has a brush of rum, another one has a smear of kirsch. Centered on top of the three layers is the bûche festooned with meringue mushrooms and marzipan trees. There are hollies and berries as well. Parvenne’s are showstoppers of the season and must be preordered. One slice never satisfies so be forewarned of customary indulgence.
Every bakery, it seems, sells gingerbread men and houses at Christmas, and St. Moritz, a mainstay on Greenwich Avenue for decades, is well-known for its gingerbread array. Folklore has it that gingerbread became popular after the Grimm brothers published “Hansel and Gretel” with its gingerbread house inhabited by a cannibalistic witch. In parts of Europe in the 17th century, only professional gingerbread makers were allowed to bake their creations year-round. That restriction was lifted during Christmas, when any baker could whip up gingerbread dough.
For gingerbread houses that will really wow the family, Sweet Lisa’s Exquisite Cakes have been hard to beat for the 27 years since she opened shop in Cos Cob.
“We make them with a lot of candy,” says owner/baker Lisa Maronian, “and they’re very festive looking so that they are beautiful and yummy to eat as well. It lasts a very long time because they are not made with eggs or butter. Shortening and molasses in the mixture keeps them moist.”
Maronian has three templates for her standard constructions. For custom orders, she makes a model similar to cutting out paper dolls. Every year, Sweet Lisa’s donates a gingerbread house of a Greenwich town structure to the Junior League’s Enchanted Forest fundraiser.
While I still yearn for the wickedly rich plum pudding I enjoyed from the Guild, my family does not, especially since the kitchen cabinets nearly caught fire one year when I put a match to the warmed dish and a startling blaze erupted. It was brighter than our lit Christmas tree and was certainly more dramatic. I have so many other choices now.