An historical Christmas bake

Earlier in the autumn I had a survey on my facebook page if people wanted me to share my historical recipes on my blog, since I have been asked from time to time for them. Enough people wanted me to post them on the blog, so I will do it from time to time. The blog is not going to turn into a food blog, I will just limit it to when I actually do historical cooking.

I like baking, but I prefer soft cakes, cupcakes and things like that. I don't like making cookies, it's boring and to be honest I'm not a big fan of hard dry cookies. Also next weekend at the Christmas fair at Falu Gruva I'm going to be portraying a well to do woman from the late 17th century, and I got inspired to see if I could make some cookies from the time period.

My first cookie that I made was a gingerbread cookie. Gingerbread goes back to medieval times, if you count it as a very spicy cake or cookie. In Swedish the name is still "pepparkaka", meaning pepper cake, giving a hint of one of the spices that was used but has disappeared from modern recipes.

For the spices I used a recipe for "Små pepparkakor" from Cajsa Warg's "Hielpreda i hushållningen för unga fruntimmer" from 1755, which is freely available on Google Books. Her recipe is quite complicated though, and since I didn't feel like recalculating all the old measurments I decided to use the ratios for flour and liquid from the recipe for "Simple Gingerbread" from Townsend and Sons. By mixing the two recipes I ended up with this, I have written the recipe in both English and Swedish:

2 cups of wheat flour/ 2 kkp vetemjöl
½ cup of honey/ ½ kkp honung
1 tsp each of / 1 tsk vardera av
cinnamon/kanel
cardamon/kardemumma
mace/muskotblomma
ginger/ingefära
allspice/kryddpeppar
cloves/nejlika
cest of lime/limeskal (Cajsa Warg calls for the rind of preserved lemon and bitter orange/pomerans, but I didn't have any at home, and the recipe needs some citrus to balance the honey)
50 g butter/smör
1 tsp baking powder/ 1sk bakpulver (Cajsa Warg used potash/pottaska, but I don't have that in my kitchen).

Heat the honey with the spices until it's liquid, add the butter and pour the the liquid into the flour and baking powder. Mix it into a fairly solid dough, add water if needed. Roll it out to 0,5 cm thickness and cut out shapes. Bake in 200 degrees celsius for 8 minutes.

As the honey and butter cools it gets harder to work with the pastry. I don't know if the pastry should rest, like a short pastry, or if one should be quick and work with it while it's still soft. For this batch I tried to be quick, it could well be worth testing to let it cool for an hour the next time. This is the kind of recipe that I would have no hesitation serving at a 16th century or medieval event, if you are rich enough since all the spices and use of wheat flour is basically there to show off wealth. By the 18th century this would have been an old fashioned or traditional recipe.

The other recipe that I made was straight from Cajsa Warg and is a recipe for "fänkålskakor", fennel biscuits. This was a tougher recipe to make since I had to recalculate the measurements, or simply guess when it came to how much flour was needed. My recipe ended up as:

300 g of honey (I actually ran out of honey so I used a mix of honey and light molasses/sirap)
30 g of zante currants/ korinter
7 g of fennel seeds/fänkålsfrö
60 g of butter/smör
300 g of wheat flour

Pound the fennel seeds in a mortar. Mix the butter and wheat flour, add the honey, fennel seeds and currants. Mix into a pastry. Roll it out to around 0,5- 1cm (Cajsa calls for a finger thickness) and cut out shapes. Put it into a 200 degrees Celsius oven for 11 minutes. They turned out very hard, like a biscotti. Next time I would take them out earlier from the oven.

This ended up as a very wet pastry, I was really unsure if I had enough flour or not. Still Cajsa calls for using flour when rolling out the pastry, which is probably a sign that it should be sticky. It ruined my shapes when I tried to lift them to the baking tray though. This also reads like a very old fashioned recipe for the 18th century, and it's last in her cookbook so maybe it's put there because it's traditional, not so much for it being a "modern" taste in the 18th century. I was afraid that it would taste too much like liquorice, but it's actually a nice and clean taste. It's funny I hate honey and liquorice, but this recipe shows that things can change when you bake them.

Finally I made kringles. It's related to the more known German pretzel, but in Sweden it's a sweet pastry. Kringles are knows since the Middle Ages, but it's hard to know what they tasted since the name has more to do with the shape than the taste. The way it's cooked, where it's first boiled in water and then dried in the oven makes them very longlasting. Up until the 19th century they were made for special occasions. For my version I used a 19th century recipe from Arboga. The 19th century is evident in that it's using yeast and sugar. To age the recipe into something more like what was done in the Middle Ages I would use a sourdough, or at least exchange some of the wheat flour for rye. I didn't get this recipe to work though and it was way too fiddly. I'm glad that I halfed the recipe so that I only had to make 10 kringles. It's from Charles Emil Hagdahl's "Kokkonsten" from 1879, and it's said to be a traditional recipe from Arboga.

100 g butter
40 g sugar
30 g yeast
50 ml milk
1 tsp cardamon
ca 400 g Wheat flour

The recipe only calls for the yeast to be dissolved in lukewarm milk and then to work the ingredients into a fairly hard dough. I decided to melt the butter, maybe that was my mistake. After the dough has proven for 30 minutes make kringles, prove for another 30 minutes. Boil a big pot of water, put the kringles into it one by one, when they rise up to the top of the water take them up and let them dry. Finish in a 200 degrees Celsius oven for 15 minutes. (I didn't get my dough to rise)

My Christmas kitchen quartet (as I call my favorite decorations) inspects the result. The kringle is at the top, the gingerbrea is the round one (I tried to stamp it but the pastry was too stiff to be able to make a nice pattern) and the fennel biscuit is the square one.

HSM challenge 11 - an ugly leather pouch

During the summer I made three different bags, two of them historical. When the HSM November challenge: bags and purses rolled along I really didn't have any inspiration at all to make yet another bag. Still I didn't want to fail a challenge when there were only two left of the year. When I organized my attic storage I had found some scrap pieces of leather, and since I need a leather pouch to wear on my belt for my 16th century outfits I decided to try and make a leather pouch or bag.

In my mind I wanted something like this woman has hanging from her belt.

Soon I realized that I wouldn't be able to do that though. The scrap pieces of leather that I had were too stiff and also I didn't have enough to make that kind of round bag with extra pockets. I was down to basically just cutting out as much of the leather as possible and assemble it into a more generic viking/medieval pouch.

This was the size that I could get out. It was based on me wanting a pouch that was big enough to hold my phone and my insulin pen, and since the pen is quite long the pouch had to be long as well. I also cut out a long strip of fabric to use as the side and bottom of the pouch.

I first sewed on the strap that is going to keep the bag on the belt. Here I discovered how hard and difficult it is to sew on leather, especially if you don't have proper leather needles. For the rest of the bag I used an awl to first make the holes before going through them with a needle. I used waxed linen thread for the sewing.

It was also a lot easier when I started using my curved upholstery needle, compared to using a straight needle.

Once I had sewed all the pieces together I wet the bag and turned it right side out. I left it to dry with a lot of plastic bags inside, so that it would keep its shape properly.

After this I discovered that I didn't have enough leather to make a flap to close the bag. Thankfully Niklas in Cosplay Dalarna gave me a piece so that I could finish the bag.

When all was done I oiled the leather with olive oil to darken it.

For the closure I used a piece of scrap leather, fastened it to the front and cut a slit in the flap. If I get my hands on a nice piece of wood or bone I would like to switch the fastening.

All in all I can't say that I really enjoyed working with leather. It's noticable on the quality of the bag as well, in the end I just wanted to finish it. It's a usable item, but not one of the things I particularly proud of.

The Challenge: 11 - bags and purses
Material: a maximum of 0,5 m of leather scraps
Pattern:  My own,
Year:  medieval
Notions: waxed linen thread
How historically accurate is it? It doesn't really look like any bags that I have seen, but it is a generic leather pouch, I would be surprised if there aren't similar bags to this one out there, or that they were used. It is handmade with correct aterials. I'm thinking 30%
Hours to complete: 15 hours
First worn: I'm planning on wearing it next weekend
Total cost: Everything was from my stash, I even got the last piece I needed as a gift.

Some thoughts about 16th century headwear

The 15th century was the century of crazy hats, turbans and veils. Then followed the first half of the 16th century where the wulsthaube with a veil was the primary style of headwear for women wearing German-styled fashion. The wulsthaube changed shape and size, until it shrank and was replaced by caps.

One of the goals of my 1520s wardrobe is to recreate this portrait of Kristina Gyllenstierna, from the altarpiece in Västerås cathedral.

It is a hard dress to recreate, since it's so vague, but I still want to try. My main issue is with the headwear. At first it looks like a big wulsthaube, but what are those darker elements of the headwear? It is also finished in a very square edge around the face, compared to wulsthaubes.

My firsr idea was that it could be something like this portrait of Barbara Wespach, from 1500.

It is a wulsthaube with decorations, and some kind of wreath around it. Or maybe something like the love couple by the Master of the Housebook

She is wearing two pieces to her headwear, a gold embroidered piece and in the back there is a plain white veil.

I wasn't quite satisfied with these kind of styles though, but after having trawled pinterest and digital archives for German paintings with different kinds of headwar I decided to go wider. The altar piece in Västerås was commisioned in Antwerp in 1516, what if the headwear shows a Flemish style of headwar instead? The basic Flemish headwear seems to be a kind of white cap, but finally I found an interesting painting. The birth of Virgin Mary by Jan de Beer.

The painting is a goldmine for headdresses, all the women in the painting are wearing different styles, and the lady in green in the center is wearing something very similar to the altar piece in Västerås. Jan de Beer belonged to a group of artists in Antwerp, and the painting above is usually dated to around 1520, so it's very close to the Västerås altar piece.

So far I haven't found any other paintings with this kind of headpiece, which makes me wonder how common or uncommon they were. There are two grave monuments in Sweden though were the woman is wearing something very similar.

This is from Sala, and shows Bråsta-Lasse and his wife. Bråsta-Lasse died in 1515. There is a very similar, but a lot more damaged, monument in Stora Kopparberg's church in Falun. I don't know the maker of these two grave stones, but they are the only examples of this kind of headwear that I've seen. Would they have put this kind of headwear on the woman, if it wasn't recognized as something fashionable? There is of course the option that if artist that made the two grave monuments was local, that he had been in Västerås, seen the sculpture of Kristina Gyllenstierna on the altar piece and decided that was a suitable style of clothing for an upperclass woman. Or do the grave moments also come from Antwerp? It is a bit of a mystery that outside of the Antwerp painting, the style seems to only be found in Västerås diocese, and all examples are dated to within five years of each other.

Trying to find out more about this kind of headwear is also made more complicated by the fact that it's a style that is present in folkwear from all over Europe. There is the southern German/Austrian goldhaube

This style developed in the 19th century though, from an earlier softer cap.

Then there is the Norwegian la and Swedish lad that is used as a bridal crown.

Women from Malung wearing lad

The lad of Malung can also be attested down to the 19th century, but I don't know how much older the tradition is.

Then of course there is the Russian kokoshnik, in all its different variations.

I tried to find a good history of the kokoshnik, but even if it's written that the kokoshnik has medieval roots, I couldn't find any pictures earlier than the 18th century.

All in all this shows that this kind of big, ornamental headpiece has been fashionable in different time periods and in different regions, it's not necessay that they go back to a common style ancestor. 

I have two pinterest boards in connection to headpieces - German style headwear and folkwear headwear. 

If you have any other examples of this kind of big headwear please share in the comments.

A quick note about velvet

I'm hoping to soon start on my 1520's court gown. For that I'm going to use the wonderful silk velvet that I failed to dye correctly for the Gold Handmaiden gown.  It's been a couple of years and the pieces of velvet has been in my stash, just waiting for the right project.

Today I took them out of the stash, and of course they were really wrinkly. You can save wrinkled silk velvet though. After having read this info note about dyeing from Naergi, I'm no longer afraid of washing or drying my silk fabric. Silk velvet gets back to life by first being washed and then you throw it in the tumbler and let it tumble dry. I used the lowest heat setting, but had it go until the fabric was totally dry.

The fabric is wrinkle free, and I have now rolled up the pieces on a cardboard tube to hopefully prevent too much wrinkling until it's time to actually use the fabric.

I have not tried to do this with cotton velvet, so I don't know how that would work.

Photos from AvestaCon

The last weekend in October was AvestaCon, a small local con that was held for the second year. I wad down sick, but I still went. I had promised to be a judge at the Dalarna Cosplay Championships, which is the regional championship that is there to encourage people to try out cosplay, and it was also a chance to take some photos of my costumes. It did end up with me loosing two days of work afterwards though, since I was home with a fever.

I had finally finished my TLJ Leia and wore it as a judge for the cosplay contest. I loved walking around with it and just swosh with my big coat. Photo by: Tom Larsson

Being down sick I spent most of my time in Hogwarts uniform, since it's so comfy and easy to wear. Photo by: Tom Larsson

Another of my very comfortable costumes is Melisandre. It's like wearing a nice and comfy bathrobe, and with my own hair. And when Anne-Sofie had bought an Elsa cosplay, we felt that we needed to take some fun photos.

Ice vs. Fire

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

The location of AvestaCon is gorgeous for dramatic photos. I haven't really decided if this is Melisandre at the wall or at Storm's End

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

The big plan for AvestaCon was to finally assemble our Pokemon superhero team, but we think that it must be cursed, we simply can't all be in costume at the same time. This time our Captain Carp was down sick, but Bellossom Girl, Umbreon and Togepi was there at least.

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

Winter is here

and for me that means working with other stuff than costumes. Like organising a big ski jumping competition with more than 120 athletes from seven countries, including some of the world's best nordic combined skiers.

Since this is a costuming blog I have some photos that goes with the blog.

First though the best view in Falun, and it's quite magical on an early morning when the sun is still rising.

Some times people claim that Dalarna, my region, is conservative and stuck in traditions. On the other hand, there aren't many places where video distance measurer does her job in a traditional folk costume. 

She double up with being a flower girl at the prize ceremony.

Last weekend I doubled up with trooping at a small event in the morning, and then I was at the jumping hills for some preparations, and it gave me a chance to take this photo.

Most of the day was spent doing this though

Looking out the window and be ready to fix things when they go bad.

My cute wool garters

For the hose that I made earlier this autumn I of course need something to hold them up. At the event where I wore them I simply tied a ribbon under the knee, and that worked really well. Now I have something nicer though.

My mother actually knitted a pair of garters for me. Knitted garters are not accurate for the time period, but I like them anyway. They are made from wool yarn that my mother said was so tricky and uneven to work with that it's probably part of the stash from my paternal great grandmother. So now I have a piece that I can use that my mother has made, and that is made from yarn that has been in the family for probably almost a 100 years. That is much more worth it to me than accuracy.