A ladle of mulled wine and a handful of festive spirit: that's Coco & Co. !

No Christmas tree this year. I opted for alternative Xmas decorations at home.

Last week, my husband and I hosted 5 friends for our second Coco & Co. special Christmas gift party. The party started at 3 P.M Saturday afternoon and ended at 4 A.M on Sunday morning...Cooking and baking took us about 4 hours, and the rest was just dedicated to sharing a good time together, around the dining table, then in front of a film: Thank you for Smoking, and eventually, talking and exchanging views until dawn.
We had agreed on making enough winter chutney to fill up 12 jars, and on baking 4 gingerbread cakes: one for each invited couple to take back home, plus one for our dinner party!
While we were getting ready to start with the chutney, my husband started playing some Brazilian bossa nova by Sergio Mendes, some French groovy music by Jean-Pierre Massiera: Psychoses, discoïd (1976-1981)...

... followed by Alexander Robotnick's Krypta 1982, The Flying Lizards, Bananarama, and Spandau Ballet, to name but a few...As for Daniel, he had concocted a special CD full of Xmas songs to cheer us up!
The Chutney was based on my winter chutney recipe, we just replaced the prunes with dates for that special batch of the day. Well, more precisely, the nuts and fruit ingredients were : dates, apricots, currants, pine nuts, walnuts and the magic touch: a ladle of ...mulled wine that Daniel prepared on the stove all afternoon long. Hum, delicious spicy mulled wine, we loved you! I just had one cup of it, when the others could refill at leisure. Such is life! I was kind of 'driving' the cooking session, so I had to stay sober.

Our Coco&Co. Date & Apricot Winter Chutney : delicious with a slice of slightly fried foie gras...

Now as for our gingerbread cake recipe, I was really happy to share my love for this traditional, Alsatian spicy Christmas loaf with my friends.
Alsace is indeed very proud of their pain d'épices and you can even find a museum dedicated to this cake in the tiny village of Gertwiller.

Illustration by Hansi, the pseudonym of the Alsatian artist Jean Jacques Waltz .

The traditional recipe for pain d'épices calls for making a pâte-mère (mother dough) by mixing honey and flour (often a combination of all-purpose and rye flours) and letting it sit for a long time, sometimes even several months. The lack of water and preserving qualities of the sugar in the honey creates an environment where germs cannot proliferate. After this aging, other ingredients are added to produce different sorts of cakes.

Traditionally pain d'épices did not contain milk or butter, making it a very low fat treat. However the spice cake recipe you find here below contains butter and eggs and does not use the pâte-mère technique, making it a practical and popular alternative for home cooks of today. It is taken from the reference cookbook: Décors et Recettes de Noël by Simone Morgenthaler.

Pain aux épices- Spice cake// Lebküeche (in Alsatian)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter and flour 2 loaf pans of 22cm

Dough:
.350 g all-purpose flour
.200 g rye flour
.2 pinches of salt
.10 g of baking powder
.15 g ground cinnamon
.5 g groudn ginger
. 4 g ground anise
. 2 g ground cloves
.2 g ground cardamom
.2 g grated nutmeg
.500 g of pine tree honey
.200 g of golden yellow sugar or muscovado sugar
.200 g butter + 20 g for the pans
. 4 eggs
Optional: 1/2 cup chopped candied orange rinds, roughly chopped

Sift the flours with the sugar, baking powder, spices and salt into a large mixing bowl. Form a well in the middle.
In a medium pan, melt the butter and honey together on very low heat.
Beat the eggs with a fork in a separate bowl. Then add the sugar and the eggs to the mixture, pour in the middle of the well,and start stirring very gently with a wooden spoon.
Mix until well blended. The dough will be stiff and sticky.
Mix in the candied orange peel if you are using it.
Spread dough into the prepared pans (you may need to push on it a bit to get it to fill into the corners).
Optional: Pour les gourmands! Top each pan with orange marmalade and press gently.
Bake for 30 min at 350F, then lower the heat to 300F for another 20 min.
Cool cake thoroughly and cover in plastic wrap to store.

Note: Most people agree that honey spice cake tastes better after it has aged a bit and some will even wait several days before eating it. Wrapped in plastic wrap you can save it at room temperature or in the refrigerator. It also freezes very well.

Spice Cake Serving Suggestions

You will probably enjoy slices of this spice cake recipe just as it is, at tea time or even for breakfast. However, the French like to use pain d'épices in many different preparations. Here are a few ideas:

• Slice and toast, then serve with butter and orange marmalade or lemon curd spread.
• Slice and toast, then serve with savory toppings, such as foie gras (a must!) and cheese - try Roquefort or goat cheese ;)
• Or use this cake to make other desserts where bread is called for. Perhaps to line a charlotte or top a crumble.

Below are our Coco&Co. goodies: winter chutney and spice cakes. I had prepared a bag full of ribbons, raffia string, kraft paper, tags and our special Coco&Co. labels (graphic design by Marco Jacob) created for the occasion. We had a lot of fun wrapping up our gifts for Christmas!

We will keep an excellent memory of this cooking session! The participants' warmth and festive spirit, plus the unpredictable effects of mulled wine turned it all into a memorable get-together party. There must have been some wine in that wine, as Marco said...

Bravo Coco & Co.!