Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ve been giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

And guess what…the Big Day is finally here! 🙂

24 December 2015

So what do the Danes typically do today? Like every other day in December, it will be a day of eating and drinking and generally being merry. Many Danes will attend a church service – there are services in the morning or afternoon (no services in the evening because that would clash with dinner) and again on the morning of 25 December. Last year we attempted to go to church but, alas, got there too late. The car park and side streets were full (a sure giveaway) and (if you forgive the Christmas pun) there was literally no room left at the inn!   Every year the church brings in extra seats for services on 24 December but, alas, it was standing room only…  Which wasn’t really an option for my DSM80 (Dear Scottish Mum, aged 80).  Yep, that old chestnut about those crazy Danes never going to church except for the 24 December is truly alive and well!   So instead we came home and watched a church service on the telly. Which was just as hyggelig!

There is no set time for Danish Christmas dinner. Light falls at around 3.30/4pm and the streets are very quiet until around 5.30/6pm when they are suddenly busy with people walking and driving to visit their families. And what’s for dinner? Goose, duck and/or roast pork. Our family always eats duck. Along with prunes and apple, warm pickled red cabbage, caramelised potatoes (cooked in a hot syrup of butter and sugar) and boiled potatoes, gravy and hot salted crisps.

You already know what dessert is…ris à l’amande (my post from 22 December)!

But who will find the whole almond and win this year’s mandelgave (marcipan pig)?

After dinner everyone dances round the Christmas tree. Very carefully – watch where you put your feet! Lots of pressies under there, you see!

Then you start picking out gifts to open, one by one…

Which generally takes us – with short breaks for drinks and konfekt (homemade sweets) – about 2 hours! Last year we woke up to a beautiful white blanket of snow on the morning of 25 December! No sign of snow this year. The temperature has been incredibly mild. Climate change, anyone?

I do hope you’ve enjoyed reading along. Merry Christmas! See you on the other side. Or on the bathing jetty!

Diane

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen.Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

23 December 2015

One sleep to go, woop woop! Today is Lille Juleaften – 23 December – which is “Little Christmas Eve” here in Denmark.  The last day of school for kids and the last shopping day (tomorrow all the shops in our village will be closed – though, in a pinch, you might be able to find a petrol station/minimarket open). I’ll be putting the rice on to cook for the traditional ris à l’amande dessert so that we are half-prepped for the Big Day tomorrow.

I was late in feeling the Christmas spirit this year. (My Dad died at the end of September, so it is going to be a very different Christmas for us.)  But we had friends over for dinner the other night (always fun watching our kids play hide and seek together!) and it meant we could pretend it was Christmas Eve, exchange some gifts and…

eat more of all that lovely konfekt that we made!

This weekend we also had some very yummy julefrokoster (lunches)…rugbrød (ryebread) with all the different toppings.  Here are a few of the things you’ll typically come across:

• marinerede sild (marinated herring with egg mayo),  karry sild (curried herring) and tomat sild (tomato herring)

• fiskefileter med remoulade (hot crumbed fish fillets with remoulade sauce)
• rejer (prawns) and gravad laks (smoked salmon with dill)
• varmt leverpostej med champignon og bacon (hot liverpâté with mushrooms and bacon)

• rullepølse med løgringe og sennep (rolled pork with ‘italian salad’ which is basically peas and carrot pieces mixed with mayo)

• sylte med sennep (potted meat with mustard)
• tarteletter med hønsekød og asparges (warm tart cases filled with chicken and asparagus)

• flæskesteg med rødkål (roast pork with red cabbage)
• medister med rødkål og sennep (a ’round’ pork sausage with red cabbage and mustard

• frikadeller (Danish meatballs)
• ost (cheese)

.

Phew, I need a brisk walk after all that. Or perhaps a nap! 😉

One sleep to go. See you tomorrow, when I’ll be opening the door for the last time this Christmas!

Diane

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

22 December 2015

A few days ago I told you that I had been buying some marcipan pigs which will be our mandelgave–  the prize for finding the whole almond in the pudding at Christmas dinner on 24 December. So today we have the pudding itself – ris à l’amande!

And here comes the recipe!  In my DDH’s family (Dear Danish Husband), they always cook the basic rice pudding on 23 December and finish it off on the 24 December.  Gives it a good taste and – more importantly – it’s nice to get half of the prep done early…  This recipe feeds 8 people – enough for us.  If you only want a small portion, half the quantities…

DAY ONE (23 DECEMBER)

Put 2½dl (250mls) of water and 2½ dl (250mls or 200g) of rice (short-grain, pudding,grødris) in a very large pot, bring to the boil and let it cook for 2 minutes.

Slowly add 1 litre of milk (sødmælk, wholemilk is best) and bring to the boil, stirring constantly.  When it boils, turn the heat right down, pop a lid on it and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.  Check on it every 10 minutes or so, giving it a good stir.  If you want to do things the old-fashioned way, you can take it off the heat after about 15 minutes and let it continue to cook, wrapped in a duvet on your bed 8)

Leave it to cool in a cool place – preferably overnight.

DAY TWO (24 DECEMBER)

Give the cold rice pudding a good stir.  Add two large tablespoons of sugar (melis/sukker) and about 4 teaspoons of vanilla sugar (vanilje sukker).  Give it a taste, and check to see that it is sweet enough for you.  Then add 100g of chopped almonds (hakkede mandler).  Give it another good stir.  Beat 4dls (400ml) of whipping cream (piskefløde) until you get soft peaks and stir into the rice pudding.  At this point you’ll want to transfer it into a nice bowl, cover and keep cool until serving time.

HERE COMES THE SCIENCE BIT!

Just before serving, add one whole, blanched almond (mandel).  Easiest way to remove the skin is to put the almond in a bowl of boiled water, let it sit for a minute, then the skin should squish right off.  A word of warning, sometimes the almonds break up when you remove the skin.  Make sure you have three or four almonds, so you end up with at least one whole one…  Add to the pudding, give it a good mix and take it to table.  Everyone gets a portion of the cold rice pudding, along with some hot, cherry sauce (kirsebærsauce).  Yum!  And now?  Let the hunt for the whole almond begin!

Who’s going to win this year?  May the best man win (the marcipan pig)!

See you tomorrow!

Diane

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

21 December 2015

Do you have a family activity at Christmas? Ours is a trip to Tivoli and must include, in addition to several rides on Rutschebanen (the park’s oldest and most popular roller coaster) and Dæmonen (‘the Demon’ loop the loop rollercoaster), a nostalgic trip down memory lane on the chair’o’planes! 😉

Everyone congregrates in front of Nimb to take a picture of the swans.

How about a king size reindeer?

This winter has been incredibly mild – I’ve hardly been wearing my woolly hat. At all. But I still remember the days of pushing our son round the Tivoli Christmas market in his buggy, all wrapped up in his ski suit, when it was minus 7c (19.4f) with a bracing windchill and hard snow everywhere – yikes! It may not be ‘Christmassy’ but I will settle for this year’s light rain! (Son is 15 now and daughter is 13.)

But this year the highlight of our Christmas so far has been…Star Wars VII! I promise no spoilers! But I can tell you that, thankfully, we weren’t the cinemagoers these Storm Troopers were looking for! 😉

May the force be with us!

See you tomorrow!

Diane 🙂

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

20 December 2015

Only four sleeps to go til Danish Christmas! Woo hoo! High time to talk Christmas trees! First off, you should know that, traditionally, the Danes have ONE Christmas tree. Not one Christmas tree in the living room, one tree in the dining room, one tree in the kids room etc, etc. Like the Highlander, there can be only one! 😀

Now, where I come from (Scotland) our trees are normally plastic and these days you can even buy them with fairy lights already attached. Plug and play.  Personally, I’d be quite happy with the artificial tree I bought when I worked at the ECJ in Luxembourg many moons ago. That tree has served me (and børnehave ‘creche’) well. It’s green plastic – selvfølgelig. And green in the eco-friendly-buy-once-never-buy-again way. But DDH (Dear Danish Husband) insists on The Real Thing. Despite the cost. [Ouch! Said the Canny Scot.] But, hey ho, it’s Christmas. And the only Christmas tradition he gives a (fresh or dried) fig about…

Normally we just walk down the road to our local  pusher and hand over a small fortune. For something that is going to adorn our living room for approximately two weeks.  [Sigh.]

Well, last year I decided to cut the crap cost and buy our tree at IKEA. Fresh, not plastic. Not quite as tall as this one, though… C’mon everyone – put your backs into it!

Along with the netting machine, they also have a nifty device for making holes in the bottom of the tree, so it can go straight into a wooden stand…

Did we select the tree in the forest ourselves and chop it down? No! But we paid half of what we normally do. And they even give you an IKEA voucher for DKR 50 (UK£5.30, US$8.40) for every tree you buy…cheap at half the price! In Denmark you leave your tree outside until about a week before Christmas then decorate with plain white lights. None of those tacky, coloured, flashing ones – it’s not the Danish way! (Though, strangely enough, our neighbours across the Sound, those silly (but lovable) Swedes really like coloured lights/moving Santas/flashing reindeers on the roof stuff.) Some of my Danish friends even do it the old-school way and use REAL candles on the tree. Yep,real candles on girls heads for Lucia, real candles on the Christmas tree. Health and Safety forgot to make a stop in Denmark!  But I just don’t dare… So we just stick to electric fairy lights. And then add baubles, Danish flags, our homemade hjerter (hearts) and our homemade kræmmerhuse (cones). In olden days, the tree would be hung with edible goodies (fruit, nuts, cookies).

Time to switch on the fairy lights (yes, it’s dark here from about 3.30pm til 8.30am), sit back and admire our handiwork with a cup of warming Christmas tea. Everyone say “Ahhhhh!”…

See you tomorrow!

Diane

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

19 December 2015

Danish supermarkets are pushing lots of marcipan (the bog-standard yellow kind, plus some rainbow colours) right now…

You’ll also see tons of Danish nougat (a very soft brown fudge, not to be confused with French white nougat or Spanish túrro) for sale.

If you take marcipan + nougat + some dried fruits (dates, apricots, crystallised ginger, etc)…

…and plenty of chocolate, then you are ready to make konfekt! Danish homemade sweets. You’ll typically see konfekt served at Christmas, as party food or at the end of a meal instead of dessert. Here’s what we’ll normally munch on when watching the day’s installment of the children’s tv Christmas calendar, along with some clementines and a cup of Christmas tea.

Need a few ideas to get you started? Take some marcipan,  a large bar of chocolate and whatever else you have on hand: dried apricots, dates, Smarties or M+Ms, tiny marshmallows, coconut, icing sugar, edible gold, food colouring and tiny paper cases… Roll out the marcipan and cut into shapes. Or take a date and ‘stuff’ it with marcipan, then dip in chocolate. Or cut up some apricots, and put a piece inside a ball of marcipan and roll in icing sugar, coconut or chopped nuts. Soak some raisins in cognac for a couple of days, then spoon into tiny cases and cover with chocolate. Anything goes!

Enlist the help of some little elves. Though keep your eye on them because they eat rather copious amounts of marcipan etc while they work…

If you want to be more creative, just ‘google’ pictures of konfekt. You can do nougat-filled-yule-logs, coconut balls, boozy flavoured marcipan etc, etc, etc…  (If you’re a Danish marcipan freak like me, then you must try making a fabulous Danish cake – Mazarinkage. My recipe for that is right here.) But this is our family-favourite-five-minute-konfekt. The hardest part? Waiting it for the chocolate to dry!

This year we also made some marcipan snitter (slices) by rolling out three different colours/flavours of marcipan, layering them up, pressing them together and cutting them into diamond shapes. Not that I’ll be eating any of these myself – they’re mindnumbingly sweet. Give me chocolate instead, please! 😉

Time to finish off and clear up…

Velbekomme!

See you tomorrow!

Diane

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

18 December 2015

Okay, this is going to be a post with lots and lots of photos.  So go grab a cup of tea, or gløgg, and get ready to relax for a few minutes with your feet up!

Each year my BFFs and I make a point of going to see an exhibition by the Grand Old Lady of Christmas Designer Decorations, Jette Frölich.  She started designing back in 1966 and has basically devoted her whole life to designing Christmas ornaments. And spends the whole year designing the next year’s collection!  (I’ve seen her exhibition each year since I moved here in 1998.) Entrance is free. But have plenty of money ready if you actually want to buy ornaments because – although a lot of them are made of paper – they don’t come cheap!

There are lots of staff on hand to help you choose, ring up your items at the till and – a major job – relighting all those candles. Yes, imagine that, the candles you can see in these pictures are real. Naked flames all over the place: on draughty windowsills, near dried twigs and paper decorations. Enough to make the fire inspectors choke on their gløgg…

Just keep your fire extinguisher (or, in a real emergency, a bottle of soda that you shake vigorously first will also do a sterling job) at the ready!

See you tomorrow!

Diane

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

17 December 2015

Last week when I was out on the town with my BFFs, I bought a pig. In fact, I went the ‘whole hog’ (boom, boom!) and bought two little piggies. Okay, so they aren’t real live ones. But they are organic, covered in chocolate and made of yummy marcipan. And part and parcel of a traditional Danish Christmas…

You see, if you’re hosting Danish Christmas dinner on the evening of 24 December and are serving the obligatory ris à l’amande for dessert (recipe coming soon…), then you’re going to need the obligatory marcipan pig for the obligatory mandelgave or ‘almond present’.  Ris a l’amande, despite the French name, is a very Danish dessert.  It’s a heavy, cold rice pudding, ‘lightened’ (ha!) with whipped cream and specked with chopped, blanched almonds.  And served with a jug of hot cherry sauce.  Yum!  Again!

According to tradition (which dates back a century or two) a whole blanched almond is ‘hidden’ in the dessert.  The dessert is served to the whole table and whoever finds the whole almond in their portion is ‘the Winner’.  The mandelgave (almond present) is usually a small, marcipan pig (marcipangris) but can also be a small bottle of snaps, a book, a game, you name it.  And if you have small kids, I’d suggest sneaking a whole almond into each and every little child’s bowl – and making sure you have several prizes on hand – if you want to ensure ‘peace on earth’ on Christmas Eve…

In my DDH’s (Dear Danish Husband’s) family, they go a step further and try to hide the fact that they have found the whole almond until the very end of the meal.  By hiding it in their mouth, in a pocket, under the tablecloth etc.  Just to keep everyone guessing.

Sometimes we make the pigs ourselves out of marcipan.  Just google “marcipangris” for images, and you’ll find plenty of inspiration.  Otherwise you can take the easy way out – and get your little piggies from a supermarket.

Or from a posh sweetie shop.

As they say around these parts, øf, øf!  Oink, oink!

See you tomorrow!

Diane