Happy New Year 2020!

Some interesting facts about Auld Lang Syne:

Boogie Woogie Jingle Bells

This 9-year old has talent!

Merry Christmas!

Who doesn't love Johnny Reid and Natalie McMaster! Put your dancin' shoes on!

(and if you see this in an email, click on Some Favourite Things)

Merry Christmas!

Johnny Reid - "Go Tell It on the Mountain" from Margaret Malandruccolo on Vimeo.

And for anyone with some time and a yen to hear more from Natalie MacMaster, here she is a few years ago with her family. Only some of the children are hers, the others are cousins, all talented. The first and oldest girl is 12 in this 5-year old video. In the intervening years MacMaster and her partner Donnell Leahy have added more children to their family and they all dance and fiddle expertly and with great joy.

Yule Logs

I hadn't planned to say anything more about Christmas baking, because after Beatriz Muller, what could possibly be left to enthuse about!

It turns out that professional bakers in Paris create the most unbelievably creative and wonderful Yule Logs you could imagine (see above!). L'Éxpress France featured a slideshow of 25 best Logs recently and you can see them here: Lancer le Diaporama Photos. Here are a few Logs to whet your whistle ;) but you should go to the slideshow on the website to see all the photos with full descriptions of ingredients and cost. 

    

  

  

  

L'Éxpress is a French website but my browser asked if I wanted to translate to English and when I said, "yes", it did so in mere seconds. Isn't modern technology wonderful!

Beatriz Muller

If you live in Ontario and enjoy reading the LCBO publication Food and Drink, you might have picked up this holiday season issue.

There are so many wonderful articles, entertaining ideas and attention-getting recipes (who can say 'no' to eggplant bacon for heaven's sake!) that it would be worth your while to find one of these at your local outlet if possible.

On page 36 there's a 2-page spread about Beatriz Muller's amazing gingerbread creations (CakesbyBeatriz.com) Beatriz lives and works in Innisfil, Ontario and creates traditional European cakes using only best quality ingredients. Because she is somewhat of a perfectionist, I will give you her info directly off her website:

Beatriz Muller is an award-winning Certified Master Sugar Artist and Gingerbread Architect who has been decorating and designing custom cakes professionally for over 15 years. Known internationally for her cake art and gingerbread masterpieces, you can find her work in magazines around the world and see her compete on network television.

She has achieved many outstanding awards for her gingerbread creations, including first prize at the 2016 National Gingerbread House competition held annually at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina and second place just a couple weeks ago as well as the 2018 Grand Prize Winner on Food Network's "Holiday Gingerbread Showdown".

Food Network 2018

These houses are a far cry from the Christmas houses the kids and I used to put together every year using graham crackers and candies with molten sugar (!) and royal icing. I remember how much fun and work were involved in building those tiny houses and also the immense satisfaction we had with the final products.

Dream House 2016 Grand Prize Winner Asheville, NC

Getting photos of Beatriz Muller's gingerbread houses onto a blog post is so tricky - there aren't many photos out there and then you understand that you really need to be there to walk all around peer into the windows and crannies to see the incredible detail.

The structures require intensive planning and scale drawings, then pieces of gingerbread are trimmed to the millimetre after coming out of the oven. Beatriz' daughter helps her and I believe there are other members of the team as well. Can you imagine the effort involved in transporting it to the venue?

Here's a video of one of Beatriz Muller's most recent creations, Perspective House, which came second in the 2019 National Gingerbread House Competition in Asheville. Here's what she says about it:

"The way we choose to see the world creates the world we see" Barry Kaufman

Perspective was inspired by Escher's Relativity and Cinta Vidals Gravitas surreal paintings. It is a multidimensional piece and it shows a world where people are living among each other but on different planes of existence, with different worldviews, and the illusion of separation without realizing that they are all connected, sharing the same hopes and dreams for a better future. Surreal architecture calls into question the concept of stillness and movement, rigidity and constant flux, the concrete and the abstract, and buried within the dream is reality.

I don't want to close this blog post leaving readers with the impression that Beatriz Muller is only about fantastical gingerbread houses. She also creates wedding cakes, birthday cakes, Yule Logs and cookies and even gingerbread boxes filled with cookies. Her creations all look very impressive and if you live in the area north of Toronto it might be well worth your while to seek her out if you have a special occasion in the future. 

Check these out!

  

  

  

Chocolate Chiffon or Genoise Sponge Cake

Filling Options: Dulce de Leche/Nutella/Strawberries and Cream/Raspberries and Cream/Mocha (Kahlua inside)

Vanilla Chiffon or Genoise Cake

Filling Options: Peaches and Cream/Lemon Raspberry/Strawberries and Cream/French Vanilla/Vanilla and Chocolate Milk Mousse

Follow Beatriz Muller on 
Instagram: Cakes_By_Beatriz
Facebook: @CakesByBeatriz

and visit her Website:

CakesbyBeatriz.com

Manhattan Neighbourhoods

The only time I was in NYC I was 14 years old and the only things that really caught my interest were sites like the Empire State Building, Central Park and the United Nations. I had no feel for how the streets were laid out or what the various neighbourhoods were called. But now, 60 years later, having read a lot of novels set in NYC, I'm a bit more interested in how it all intersects, so when this map popped up in my Twitter feed, I was delighted and fascinated. It will definitely enhance my reading. I have it on my phone so I can zoom in for a better view.