The Secret History of Christmas Baking
Recipes & Stories from Tomb Offerings to Gingerbread Boys – Linda Raedisch
Explore the Surprising and Sometimes Dark Origins of Beloved Holiday Bakes
Spice up your season by rolling, molding, and kneading your way through the world's oldest and most iconic Christmas recipes. This culinary adventure offers fascinating historical details and uncanny tidbits about sailors, saints, tomb raiders, refugees, and witches. Discover what the ancient Egyptian version of gingerbread was like, why cookies were once considered pharmaceuticals, and how the background of even the humblest holiday treat is a global story.
Through forty recipes adapted for modern bakers, Linda Raedisch shows you how to make Linzer tartlets, Christstollen, almond cookies, and other goodies. She also offers illustrated instructions for dressing up your parcels, tins, and cookie plates with festive crafts.
Caren Gussoff Sumption, contributing writer for ”Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus” wrote:With equal parts sugar, spice, humor, and heart, Linda Raedisch takes us on a rollicking adventure through the surprising (and at times surprisingly dark!) histories behind our favorite holiday treats (and ones we'd never heard of but now can't wait to try!), then lays out easy-to-follow steps to make and decorate them. Inventive, captivating, and so very smart. I learned a ton from this book, which will no doubt become a staple of the Scholarly Cookbook genre (and if that's not a thing, it is now!). Truly the best kind of gift, Christmas or other.
Natalie Zaman, award-winning author of ”Magical Destinations of the Northeast” and ”Color & Conjure” wrote:The Secret History of Christmas Baking is many things: a compendium of (sometimes strange) culinary delights, a personal remembrance of family traditions, and a whirlwind tour of the sometimes sinister, occasionally tragic, and always colorful backstories of ingredients, recipes, methods, and madnesses that flavor our most beloved holiday treats. Linda Raedisch tempers a historian's eye with wry humor and reverence. This book is a must-read for any baker, marzipan enthusiast, or kitchen witch.
Tom A. Jerman, author of ”Santa Claus Worldwide” wrote:If Mrs. Beaton, Hildegard, and The Two Fat Ladies got together with a medieval monk and had a love child, it would be The Secret History of Christmas Baking. Linda Raedisch has made me rethink my aversion to fruitcake. Oh, and the book's peppered with crafts for when you can't face down one more cookie. I am insanely jealous that I did not write this book.
Linda Raedisch's latest book describes itself as The Secret History of Christmas Baking, but it is much more than that. It is a fascinating history of the remarkably violent medieval spice trade...For serious bakers, it describes the uses of a variety of spices, nuts, and other rare ingredients...It provides the promised history of baking with a variety of historical recipes, some made primarily at Christmas and some not, from Europe and Asia, as well as DIY instructions for paper crafts displayed at Christmastime in one culture or another.