C is for Cookie and Cookie is for me.
Waking up on Sunday, the elves had once again given me a morning gift, this time a lollipop made of the same stuff as the hard candies you can get made in Montville.
We had a big breakfast that appears to be a much more formal affair on the weekends. Then Nina asked me to help her make Christmas cookies. She explained that she has to make enough for five families to receive a large biscuit tin full. The first kind we made were called "vaniliekranse", which essentially means vanilla rings or circles. Nina had premade *many* batches of dough for the different types and frozen them, so for the first type she took chunks of dough and put them through a meat grinder with a small star attachment that spat out strings of dough. Just picture those play-doh ice cream sets that have you squeeze out the dough with a syringe.
Due to the mechanical nature of this process, production speed was immense. So much so that I couldn't keep up. My job was to break on a 5 cm piece of dough and form it into a circle and place it on the baking paper lined tray. While in theory (and in practice, to be honest) this was simple, the fast pace proved too much, and Nina had to do double duty and break on the pieces for me so I could catch up. The modern addition of the machinery meant that we were able to make hundred in a matter of minutes.
Next we made "Brun Kage" which translates to brown cake. These were made by taking long rolls of frozen dough and putting them through an electric saw attachment in a food processor. So what are these biscuits like? I'm not sure how many of you have had your taste-buds blessed with the Almond Spekulatius biscuits that Aldi sells. Let me inform you, they are Gods gift to biscuit-loving man; the symphony of spices, such as homely cinnamon, subtle nutmeg and a fabulous undertone of ginger- topped off with crunchy slithers of almond on the back of the fun farm machinery-shaped biscuits. In short, they are da bomb. I will unashamedly tell you that I can eat nearly an entire 300 g packet in one sitting if a large glass of milk is present.
Now, while Aldi's biscuits are from Germany, I believe that Denmark's Brun Kages are the little brother of such bikkies, the exact same taste, including the almond slithers, once again gracing my mouth. And we made hundreds. For Nina's sake I limited myself to 3, but lord knows if the opportunity should present itself, I would eat the crap out of them in a heartbeat.
The next kind we made were like pastry, a ball of the dough rolled out into 2mm thick shape that was sliced into little parallelograms with a little hole in the middle. My task was to "make the knots", or flip one end through the hole to make it look pretty.
Nina then dropped each into boiling pig fat (gonna be honest, the smell was slightly nauseating) for a few minutes then allowed them to dry on paper towel. These turned out pretty tasty, like slightly firmer mini-croissants. Once again, hundreds were made, although Freddy is trying his hardest to reduce that number to single figures.
While Nina was deep frying them, Mathilde and I made yet another kind, that are heaps crumbly balls of vanilla bikkies. They're somewhat like shortbread with a slightly different texture.
(Disclaimer, Mathilde ate that missing one, not me)
When we took the daily tea break, the time felt right to give the family some gifts I had brought them, to further introduce them to Australia's culture. I first gave them a large photographic guide to Queensland by Steve Parish (crazy heavy and made keeping to the weight limit for my luggage really hard) and spent some time showing them places like my area, toowoomba and Warwick, where their last SISEP student Jacob was from. After giving them a rather fetching tea towel with a map of Australia on it, I got to the good stuff: Food.
To start things off, I showed them Musk sticks, black and gold variety, no less. They were pretty astounded to learn of it's perfume base, especially Freddy who mildly reacts to perfume (After taking one for the team, Freddy can confirm that musk sticks are not hypoallergenic for people with perfume allergies. Sorry Freddy.) I also gave them chocolate freckles, which apparently they have a variation of, only with a hole in the middle (These people have a fascination with holes, they're in everything. Let me show you-
This is Danish money, known as Krone. The holes in some of them means that I have actually considered making a necklace out of them.
Remember these little gems? Vanilla rings. You know what rings have? Holes.
Look at all those windows. You know what windows are? Holes. Holes in the walls, filled with glass.
I'm pretty sure I saw someone eating a doughnut the other day aswell.
Next I gave them coconut ice, from a brand called "Kelly", after Australia's famous rouge. They weren't quite sure what to make of that. I then brought out the longest package of Tim Tams you have even seen. If any of you have been to Myers lately, you would know that they are selling these massively long packets for christmas, and the best bit? They are customisable. So on this astonishingly long packet of Tim Tams, I got the family name, "Frank-Jessen's" put on in the place of Arnott's. They loved that, I'm a genius. Last but definitely not least I gave them Kangaroo Jerky. Mathilde especially, was a bit horrified at the thought of Skippy in a bag, but as I explained to them, since bringing a live roo in my carryon is frowned upon, I settled for the next best thing. Only time will tell if anyone is game enough to try it.
^someone gave me some lego, because they are originally from Denmark. Proud to say I smashed a lego helicopter out in under 5 minutes. Get in.
Next Mathilde and I played some music on the guitar and ukulele, (It's safe to say we had a good Jam), and then we attempted to buy Bus tickets for next weekend's trip to Copenhagen, where we will be staying with NSW rep, Cameron and his host family. For whatever reason, the Travelex card & my Combank travel card wouldn't work, causing a mild panic that my only source of cash was not working. What even is my life? To try and rectify the situation, Freddy & Mathilde took me to the local supermarket to see if my card would work there. But this required me buy something. I spent a remarkable amount of time browsing and scrutinising almost every item in the store, much to their bemused frustration. I was also onece again reminded that with my incredible maturity, I am legal to drink and buy (under 16%) alchohol. I didn't, but the rush of having that as an option was enough. I finally settled on a bag of mixed lollies from the lolly bar, and took it to the counter, where my presentation of the card caused Freddy much embarrassment. Picture this: One large (loud) Australian, speaking animatedly in a foreign language, presenting my card like this guy slicing his watermelon; two handed, swinging down from above my head to tap the machine.
The excited squeals and shouts of "great success" thoroughly confused the poor cashier, who Freddy later told me was a classmate of his.
After dinner, I was exhausted (you know, from all that physical activity I did) and was asleep before 10.
Living the rockstar life, guys.