Warm Cake and Fragrant Wine

Since the December 2015 issue, Travellive has dedicated "Slow Living" as a gift to readers of peaceful moments amidst a busy life.

Friday night at 7pm, after 3 weeks of non-stop business trips, a packed schedule with deadlines for the holiday issue, and a stable job, I decided to go home. All I could think about was the soft bed, hoping that a good night's sleep would soothe the nerves that had been working at full capacity for the past few weeks.

“Your face looks like someone who has been starved for a long time!” – That was the first thing Z. said after kissing my forehead when I entered my apartment – ​​now filled with the aroma of butter, the strong smell of wine, the scent of oranges, lemons and herbs.

“What are you doing home at this hour? Where did the Christmas tree and those baubles come from?”

“This afternoon, I stopped by the bakery on the ground floor of the building and saw that they had started playing Merry Go Round, White Christmas, and they had all kinds of Christmas cookies in the glass case, they smelled so good, honey. And as soon as I got off work, I went looking for all these things, do you remember our first Christmas together?

…

Gingerbread cookies and mulled wine were called warm cakes and aromatic wine by us. That was the first time we cooked together. That Christmas, we climbed up to the roof, sang White Christmas, ate cookies and drank wine, then fell asleep until the dew soaked through the thin blanket before we went downstairs. Even now, although we have traveled a lot and tasted wines from many countries, the mulled wine he cooked for the night of December 24th is always the most magical drink. Many years after living together, on special days of the year, we still give each other unique gifts brought back from business trips. But it seems that the busy and hurried life makes me forget that the taste of warm cakes and aromatic wine that year still makes him remember more than anything.

Smooth flour. Sweet sugar. Rich golden butter. Fragrant cinnamon. Warm spicy ginger... Pine trees and tiny bells are puffing up their brown skins in the oven. On a glass pitcher in the middle of the dining table, mulled wine is steaming, the red color of the wine highlighting the beautiful slices of lemon and orange.

The air was a mixture of the sweet aroma of the cakes and the warmth of cinnamon, cardamom and cloves wafting from the wine bottle. Z. helped me calm down after the hustle and bustle of life. Tomorrow, I will cancel my weekend schedule. Tomorrow, I will stay home with my own “slow-life oasis”, watching the balls swaying on the Christmas tree at the corner of the door and celebrating Christmas early with the clumsy chef trying to carefully print each cake in the kitchen…

Gingerbread cookies

Ingredient:

3 tablespoons brown sugar

6 tablespoons white sugar

200g unsalted butter

2 teaspoons cinnamon powder

2 teaspoons ginger powder

100ml milk

200g flour

Add brown sugar, butter, white sugar, cinnamon powder, ginger powder, milk into a large bowl, mix well with flour. Place the mixture on a flat kitchen counter, roll the dough evenly so that it is about 5mm thick. Cut the dough into your favorite shapes. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. After spreading the parchment paper on the tray, arrange the cut dough pieces and bake for 15 minutes. The baked cake can be eaten immediately or decorated with whipped cream.

Hot wine

- 2 oranges

- 1 yellow lemon

- 50ml sugar water

- 5 cloves

- 5 star anise

- 3 cinnamon sticks

- 800ml red wine, 200ml white wine

- 50ml water

Cut oranges and lemons into round slices and boil in 50ml of water with cloves, star anise, and 2 cinnamon sticks. When the mixture boils, add red and white wine, sugar, and stir gently to dissolve the sugar and let the wine soak into the spices. Increase the heat and cook for another 5-8 minutes, then turn off the heat. Pour the wine into a glass bottle and serve hot with gingerbread or other hard cakes.

(Wine and cake recipes are guided by the Bakery and Wine Bar of Sheraton Hanoi Hotel)

The Thanh