The Circle: St. Nikolaus

Sunday the eighth day in our Advent Circle also happens to be the feast day of St. Nicolas. In many regions of Europe children receive their gifts today.
The contribution to the Circle today comes to you in combination with my daughter Eve, who is now in the 11th grade.

St. Nikolaus

This morning when I exclaimed "Happy St. Nicolas Day!" to the family over breakfast Eve shared a little morsel from her German class this past Friday. Her Swiss German teacher mentioned that children in Switzerland are visited by St Nic who brings one large bag with gifts or hands out individual bags to each child.

Was bringt St. Nikolaus den Kindern in der Schweizi / What St. Nic brings children in Switzerland

Candy: die Bonbons
Oranges: die Oranges
Walnuts: die Baumnüsse
Tangerines: die Mandarinen
Cookies: die Kekse
Fig: die Feigen
Date: die Datteln
Peanut: die Erdnuss
Green Apple: der grüne Apfel
Pear: die Birne
Gingerbread Marzipan Bar: der Biber

Curious about the Gingerbread Marzipan I found a few links and also noticed that in Germany it may be called Lebkuchen. Please correct me if you know.

Lindt Marzipan Orange Bar

Ritter Sport Marzipan Bar

Marina Market - Bahlsen Orange Filled Lebkuchen

How to make your own Lebkuchen

Elisen lebkuchen - by Alfons Schuhbeck

for 40-50 cookies

½ t hartshorn (baking ammonia)
1 Tbl. Rum
40 g candied orange peel
30 g candied citron
200 g ground almonds
50 g ground hazelnuts
40 g flour
A pinch of salt
1 t. Lebkuchen spice
4 egg whites
190 g sugar
130 g. raw marzipan
40-50 Back Oblaten, 50 mm diameter (a thin, tasteless wafer made of flour and water)
150 g whole almonds
Glaze:
1 eggwhite
100 g powdered sugar
1 Tbl lemon juice
Dissolve the baking ammonia in the rum.
Mince the candied fruits as small as possible and combine with the ground almonds and hazelnuts, flour, salt, and Lebkuchen spice.
Add sugar to egg whites and beat until firm and creamy.
Break the marzipan into small pieces.
Add 2 Tbl. of the beaten egg whites and combine until it is smooth.
Stir in the dissolved baking ammonia and rum..
Alternate adding the flour mixture and the remaining beaten egg whites to the marzipan
At this point, the dough can be refrigerated for 2 to 3 days.
This will improve the taste as the flavors blend together.
When you are ready to bake:Lay out the Oblaten on a cookie sheet.
Don't leave too much room between them, just a comfortable half inch or so from each neighbor.
On each Oblaten, place a small mound of the dough, leaving only a very narrow rim of the oblaten free of dough.

It is optional but traditional to place an almond on top of each cookie.
The full recipe should fill two cookie sheets. Let the cookies rest on the sheets for at least a half a day.
Preheat the oven to 340 degrees F.
Bake the Lebkuchen for about 30 minutes. (Check on the cookies after 20 minutes and shift the sheets if necessary.)
While the cookies are baking, prepare the glaze. Combine the egg white, lemon juice and powdered sugar in a small bowl and stir until smooth.
Glaze the still-warm Lebkuchen, using a pastry brush.

Source: Alfons Schuhbeck's Weihnachtliches Backen (Christmas Baking)

If you have been following all the entries here in our Circle you will notice that Orange has become a common theme. We have many different essential oils of orange derived from the pressing of the peel. The most common are:

Sweet orange, Citrus sinensis  or sometimes Citrus aurantium, varietas dulcis

Bitter orange, Citrus aurantium, varietas amara

and

Blood orange: Citrus aurantium, varietas amara

In my experience as an Aromatherapy practitioner and a Botanical Perfume artist I have noticed that citrus is the most universal of all the scent families. Almost everyone, across the board, loves the smell of citrus, particularly orange.

Here is a journal entry from a December of 2007 which focuses a bit on how to deal with stress during the Holidaze. Perhaps there are a few pointers here that will make your holiday a bit more jolly.

Holidaze

Images: ADVENTure blogging banner and other graphics by Roxana Villa.

Mother Nature

One scent that binds my mother, my daughter and myself is heavenly Neroli, essential oil of the flowers from the bitter orange tree Citrus aurantium var amara. Categorized as a floral and a top note, Neroli is one of the most beloved of all the raw materials in the perfumers palette. This treasure imparts fresh floral and citrus notes to a perfume when mindfully blended. In aromatherapy the scent is often used in formulas for both babies and new mothers due to it's gentle and uplifting properties.

Neroli is like a divine being from the fairy realm whose intoxicating fragrance arrives before her, soothing you like a lullaby into a euphoric dreamy trance. When she blossoms forth into this earthly manifestation she bestows yet more gifts of elixirs for the skin, healing massage oils and tonics for the respiratory system.

I chose Neroli because it was on both my mothers scent palette and my daughters. A scent palette is what I refer to when I construct a custom perfume for an individual. As a child, visiting Buenos Aires I was often spritzed with a traditional Eau de Cologne titled Colonia de Bebe. The main note in that cologne, as in classic cologne formulas, was Neroli.

Neroli was named after the Italian princess Anne-Marie de la Tremoille, the Countess of Nerola. She is responsible for introducing the scent to the fashion community of late 17th century Europe.


Unfortunately I do not possess a bottle of Colonia de Bebe, all I have are my memories of how much I adored the scent. In November 2005 I decided to create a traditional eau de Cologne which spurred on the Lavender perfume titled Vera. Last May I revisited the genre and formulated a light and fresh eau de Cologne that contains some of the same language of the beloved Colonia de Bebe. In fact when my mother inhaled it she exclaimed "Colonia de Bebe!"

The orange tree blesses us with several essences, they include orange essential oil from the pressed or steam distilled rinds of the fruit. Orange juice essence, a fairly new raw material that is derived from the distillation of the juice. Petitgrain, the distillation of the leaves and small twigs of the tree. When the waxy, white blossoms of the tree are water distilled the essence is referred to as Neroli, however, when an absolute is created it is deemed as Orange Blossom.

In morphological terms each of these parts have different associations. In aromatherapy we use flowers in our blends to uplift and blossom open the heart. Further investigating flowers we see that they have four parts: sepals, petals, stamens and pistils. Flowers can be very erotic, like women, and attract pollinators like the bees.

Thus Neroli, an essence derived from flowers with a rich history, feels like the one that weaves it's fragrant web from the oranges of Seville in Italy, to Colonia de Bebe in Argentina and the here and now of the orange groves of Los Angeles. Like these white flowers my mother, my daughter and myself are only here on this plane in physical form for a brief instance, yet let's hope that our lasting impression will be like the memory of Colonia de Bebe and linger on. With that line I leave you with a photo of my mothers mother Ani. The photograph is from 1931 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Her memory is very much alive in me with olfactory delights from her apartment on Avenida Libertador in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This journal post is written in tandem with three other mothers who happen to also have blogs. A part two of this post can be found here. Please follow these links to read their musings on "Mother and Kids, and the Scents that Bind Us." Beginning with Elena Vosnaki of Perfume Shrine, who birthed this idea followed by the Natural Perfumer Ayala Moriel at her Smelly Blog and Trish Vawter the author of the blog Scent Hive. Each of us is bonded by scent and by the common tribe we share, motherhood.

Related journal entries:
Vera and my first EDC
herb + citrus = EDC

A Summer Solstice Perfume

The great earth wheel has cycled around once again as the Sun reaches its zenith and marks Midsummer, the longest day of the year. To create a perfume, anointing oil or balm for Summer Solstice consider building it based on orange, calendula and rose.

For the botanical perfumer essences of orange from the peel and the juice are readily available. Orange flower absolute is the most prized from the spectrum of orange and lends a beautiful floral note to the heart. Tinctures, infusions and extracts can also be made from both the fresh rind and flower to deepen the theme. Calendula is available as a C02 and an infused oil. The infused oil would work well added to another base oil if you are creating a solid perfume or oil based perfume.

The rose is considered the flower of the Summer Solstice. An essential oil or absolute of rose is another theme that could be built on or added to the essences mentioned above. Both Orange and Rose are available as waxes which work well added into beeswax for solid perfumes.

Another form of scent fitting for the holiday is an Eau de Cologne. View our journal entries on Eau de Cologne here.

As you celebrate the sun, the light and our manifestation here on earth be sure to hold a special an intention for the day. This intention can be strengthened with each application of your special perfume.

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass
on a summer day listening to the murmur of water,
or watching the clouds float across the sky,
is hardly a waste of time."
~ John Lubbock

Read more about the iconography of Summer Solstice and creating a botanical perfume for the day here at last years post on the subject.

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