Our Blog

12 Days Until Christmas - Special Goodies for Christmas Eve

Gift idea: Christmas Eve goodies

Makes a good gift for: Families with toddlers or young kids

Here at Twelve Days we are hoping to share our family tradition with the world. Another time for traditions is Christmas Eve – the night before Christmas. There is no shortage of children’s books illustrating the beloved story The Night Before Christmas or any other Christmas story. Below I have found a couple of fun pieces that could become part of any family’s Christmas Eve tradition for years to come.

Night Before Christmas Tea Towel - for when you are baking Santa's cookies, perhaps?

Night Before Christmas Dish Towel -Smithsonian Store - $14.99

Night Before Christmas Pillow - for reading a couple great Christmas stories before bedtime:

Night Before Christmas Pillow - Smithsonian Store - $165.00

Cookies for Santa Plate

Cookies for Santa Plate Smithsonian Store - $24.99

The Greatest Gift – the book that It’s A Wonderful Life was based on

The Greatest Gift - Smithsonian Store - $55.00

The Significance of the Number Twelve Throughout the Ages

On 12-12-12, I thought a post about the significance of the number 12 would be nothing but appropriate, so here you go:

The Role of the Moon

A lunar month, from new moon to new moon, averages 29 ½ days. Twelve lunar months, of a lunar, is about 354 days – short of the 365 ¼ days in the solar year. As a result, additional days – roughly twelve – are needed to keep lunar timekeeping in step with the seasons. For our forebears, these twelve “extra” days were a mystical season out of ordinary time, suspended in the twelve-day gap between cosmic cycles of the moon and sun. These “extra” days are one in the same as The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Ancient Egyptians

The ancient Egyptians were one of the first people to develop a twelve-month calendar that was based only on the sun instead of the moon. They also divided the day and the night in to twelve hours each.

Mesopotamians and Ancient Persians

The Mesopotamians held an annual fire festival for twelve days surrounding the winter solstice (the twelve shortest days of the year) to cheer on their sun god as he battled to conquer the monsters of darkness and chaos. The ancient Persians held a similar solstice celebration with bonfires burning all night to help their god of light and day defeat the evil god of darkness and night.

Ancient Slavic Rituals

In the lands of the ancient Slavic tribes, both sun gods and sun goddesses were revered during their winter solstice festivals, which lasted ten to twelve days and were a time when Slavs honored their departed ancestors with fires to keep them warm and feasts to keep them fed, hoping to elicit their assistance in defeating the dark forces that were overpowering the old sun.

13 Days Until Christmas - A Different Kind of Christmas Sweets

Gift idea: Fire pit and/or s’mores kit

Makes a good gift for: Families, someone with a sweet tooth

For a lot of people, s’mores around a fire outdoors is a camping memory. But s’mores do not have to be limited to the wilderness. Anyone can make s’mores at home – in the microwave, as I have been known to do, or in the backyard.

I think that an amazing gift for a family of people would be an outdoor fire pit, the ingredients to make s’mores, and if you really want to include the whole shebang – some skewers, wood and matches.

Here are some nice fire pits:

Odesa Fire Bowl - Target - $69.99

Fire Sense Folding Fire Pit - $55.50

Halo Fire Pit - $87.59

And if you don’t want to just head to the grocery store to put together a couple bars of chocolate, a bag of marshmallows and a box of graham crackers, you could order one of these s’mores kits:

Hershey’s S'mores Kit- $15.95

Recchiuti Chocolate S'mores Kit - $23.00

Buche de Noel aka Fancy French Log Cake

I don't know why, but I have always wanted to make a Buche de Noel, or Christmas Log cake. This cake is a traditional French Christmas cake made of rolled spong-cake and chocolate buttercream. Depending on your artistic abilities to sculpt buttercream and marzipan, the cake can be made to look very realistic, or just cute and log-like.

Ingredients for sponge cake:

1 cup cake flour
Pinch of baking powder
Pinch of salt
4 eggs - separated into whites and yolks
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon sugar
Rum, for sprinkling
Powdered sugar, for sprinkling

Pan: 10" x 15" jelly-roll pan, or a double-sheet cake pan - 13" x 17.75", which is what I used because that was all I could find at Target. It just made for a slightly larger, but flatter, spong-cake.

Instructions for sponge cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Sift the flour twice with the baking powder and salt in a medium sized bowl. Set aside.

3. In a separate large bowl, beat the egg yolks with 1 cup of sugar and vanilla extract until very thick and pale yellow - as you keep beating you will see them change color from the rich almost orangey-yellow of egg-yolk to a softer pastel yellow.

4. In a separate bowl (or in the bowl of a stand-mixer, or with a hand-mixer) beat egg whites. As the whites begin to stiffen add 1 tablespoon sugar and continue to beat until the whites hold stiff peaks.

5. Sift the flour-mixture into the yolk-mixture a little at a time, folding after each addition until all dry ingredients are incorporated.

6. Add the whites and fold gently, but thoroughly, using a rubber spatula. This step was the most awkward for me, as the whites were hard to incorporate - but just be patient and keep folding the batter over the whites and it will eventually incorporate into a fluffy, somewhat lumpy, batter.

7. Pour the batter into your cake pan that is lined with buttered parchment paper. Spread the batter evenly over the pan.

8. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until cake is golden brown. Keep an eye on it - this cake is thin!

9. After you remove it from the oven, sprinkle the cake with rum.

10. Remove the cake from the pan by pulling it out on top of the parchment paper, and place the cake on the counter. Sprinkle the top of the cake with powdered sugar, and then place another piece of parchment paper on top of the cake (so the cake is now in the middle of a parchment-paper sandwich). Then take a cooling rack, or cookie sheet and place that on top of the top piece of parchment paper. Now is the tricky part - flipping the cake. We have a pizza peel on hand, and that worked wonderfully to flip the cake over with, but a thin cookie sheet, or just an extra pair of hands would help to flip the whole cake over so you can peel the buttered-parchment paper off.

11. While the cake is still warm, roll the cake, starting with one of the long edges, with the paper still on.

Ingredients for mocha buttercream:

1/2 cup water
1 1/4 cup sugar
5 egg yolks
1.5 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
2 teaspoons instant coffee powder

Instructions for buttercream:

1. If you have not done so already, melt your chocolate. I use the double-boiler method: place a medium sized bowl over the top of a small sauce pan that has an inch or so of water in it. Bring the water to a boil. Once the bowl gets hot enough, you can place your chopped up chocolate pieces in the bowl and stir constantly until it is melted. Then remove the bowl from the pan and set aside. You can also melt chocolate in the microwave, but I am always afraid of burning it that way.

2. To ensure that the butter incorporated into the frosting well, I melted it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. It did not totally liquify, but it was very very soft.

3. Combine water and sugar in a small pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Boil for several minutes until the mixture reaches 238 degrees, or the mixture forms a soft ball when a drip is dropped into ice water.

4. While the water and sugar is boiling, beat the egg yolks until pale yellow. I started out doing this by hand, but got tired of all the beating so I switched to using my stand-mixer. A hand-mixer would work well too.

5. Once the yolks have reached the pale-yellow color, pour the hot syrup into the yolks, beating constantly (again, the stand mixer comes in handy here). Continue beating until mixture has cooled down significantly.

6. Beat the butter into the mixture, a little at a time, then add the melted chocolate and the coffee powder.

7. Depending on how warm the buttercream is, you might want to let it firm up a bit in the fridge before you start spreading it.

8. Once the buttercream is adequately chilled (to a frosting-like consistency) unroll the cake and spread the inside with half of the buttercream. Re-roll the cake as tightly as you can without breaking the cake (and if the cake does break a little, don't worry because it will be covered with frosting). To keep the cake "sealed" shut, I added a little extra buttercream along the top to make sure it did not unroll. If you have the time, cover the cake and let it chill for a couple of hours in the fridge. I only chilled mine for about an hour and it was fine.

9. Depending on the look you want, you can trim the edges off the cake and use them for decoration (or test-tasting) or you can leave the jagged edges on. Spread the roll with the remaining buttercream - I piled the remaining buttercream along the top of the cake and spread it down from there. Then score any kind of bark-like decorations into the cream you want. I let Jon do the decorating - he used the blunt end of a paint-brush to drag through the cream to make bark-grooves and a knot in the bark.

10. Depending on how fancy you want to get you can add marzipan leaves, almonds, cherries etc., and some people will cover the ends of the "log" in chopped nuts or colored sugar.

14 Days Until Christmas - Fun Family Craft Kits

Two More Weeks Until Christmas!

Gift Idea: Arts and Crafts Kits

Makes a good gift for: Families, kids

When its raining or cold outside, I always love to do something crafty around the house. Always have, always will. And when the kids are home for Christmas, doing something creative together can be a great way to spend the blustery winter days. Here are some cute craft kits I have found that will bring a smile and some creative entertainment to the kids on your Christmas-list:

Encourage creativity and family unity with an imaginative kit that lets kids create their own wooden family from seven dolls, 3 pieces of fabric, 3 pieces of felt, craft glue, yarn in 4 colors, and 12 colored pencils:

Make Your Own Family Set - Uncommon Goods - $40.00

This kit contains everything they need to create their own, one-of-a-kind snow globe. They'll start with brightly colored polymer clay, and with adult supervision bake it into permanent form. Then they'll follow the simple instructions to insert their sculpture into the clear plastic ball, and add water and glitter. As a final personal touch, they can decorate the cardboard base in any way they can imagine.

Make Your Own Snowglobe Kit - $28.00

Set comes with everything needed--from glitter to glue--and easy-to-follow instructions to build your very own kaleidoscope. Includes cardboard tube, plastic mirror pieces, assorted beads and rhinestones, adhesive paper, foil confetti, craft glue and instructions.

Make Your Own Kaleidoscope Kit - $37.00

This mini wood version can be built in around an hour or two and can shoot a ball over 15 feet! Adjustable pads on the crossbar allow you to change the trajectory angle. The rope, strung through the middle gives great power to the swing arm.

Catapult Kit - $28.00

« Previous 1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 21 Next »