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| My house 2013 |
I love the Christmas season! We always go all all out at our house. It takes me a good three days to put up all the inside decorations, including two trees. Hubby spends a week putting up the outside decorations. It’s quite garish actually.
So today, I thought it only fitting to share a couple Regency Christmas recipes.
Negus is actually a form of mulled wine. The difference is in the method used to heat the wine. Negus is heated in a saucepan, while mulled wine is heated with a blazing hot poker.
Do you suppose those Regency folks had a poker just for Negus?
Ingredients:
4 cups port wine
8 cups boiling water
Juice from 2 lemons (strained)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 stick cinnamon
10 whole cloves
Grated nutmeg
Lemon slices
Mix the lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and water together. Bring to a boil, and boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and add the port. Stir.
Ladle into glasses and top with a dash of nutmeg.
Gingerbread Cookies
Gingerbread cookies and Christmas celebrations have a long association. These spicy treats have appeared on holiday tables for centuries, since Medieval crusaders returned from the Middle East bringing back to Europe spices, sugars, almonds and citrus fruits. Catholic monks began to bake gingerbread for saints’ days and festivals, constructing the dough into specially designed theme “cakes.” Often depicting celebrated saints and religious motifs, they depended on large and elaborately-carved “cookie boards” that impressed an all-over surface pattern onto a fairly stiff rolled dough. By the early 19th century, gingerbreads were popular in households across Europe, at holidays and other times.
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 cup corn syrup
2 tablespoons cream1. Sift together the flour, salt, and spices.
2. Cream the butter, add sugar, and beat until light and fluffy.
3. Heat corn syrup and cream in a saucepan, stirring to blend.
4. Alternately add the corn syrup mixture and the flour mixture to the butter and sugar, stirring lightly. Allow to stand for 10 minutes.
5. Flour your hands and form 1-inch balls in any shape. Place on a floured baking sheet, and bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes or until they are a spicy golden brown.
This recipe is courtesy of http://www.erasofelegance.com/cooking/regencyrecipes.html
