A Pre-Christmas Baking Calm Settles over the Grand Duchy. . .

Here's the finished product just out of the oven. Time to make some fresh coffee and indulge. And the house still smells amazing this morning!

The Grand Duchess and I decided to try our hands at making some Swedish lussekatter (saffron buns) in honor of Santa Lucia Day yesterday evening. The verdict? A resounding success. About two hours of preparation time, including two rounds of letting the dough rise, but it goes pretty quickly with two people working together. Dare I suggest that it's a fun culinary activity for partners and spouses to undertake in the run up to Christmas?

Here is an earlier photograph of the Grand Duchess brushing eggwhite glaze over the dough before it went into the oven for about 15 minutes.

Now rest easy. The piece-de-resistance should be along shortly when the Grand Duchess bakes her authentic Dresdner Stollen in the next few days. And I'm really looking forward to that. Some of you long-time visitors to the GD of S blog might recall that it was during one such Stollen preparation session way back in early December of 2005 that the name for my burgeoning old school wargaming project, in the spirit of Charge! and The War Game, first occurred to me. Anyway, that is so full of butter that you can almost feel your arteries clogging as you enjoy a slice or two, but it's about the best Christmas treat I can think of. . . especially when enjoyed with copious amounts of fresh, strong coffee!

This particular old post card must be British, judging by the salutation and use of the name Father Christmas.

Finally, the next 10 RSM musketeer figures stand ready for two coats of white acrylic basecoat later today followed by the application of green to their bases, fleshtone, and black on the hats, shoes/gaiters, and cartridge pouches this evening. I'll tackle five in one go, so I can have a batter chance of making the January 16th deadline for the painting challenge in which I am participating. Ok, enough idle chit-chat. I've got paint brushes to warm up and Humbrol enamels to stir!

Comments

Old School ACW said…

The 16th!?

BLAST! I'd been planning for the 26th!

Paint faster!

Greg

2:58 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

Might I suggest that you provide a link to the Grand Duchess' recipe for Stollen that you posted a few years back?

I'm sure that some of your readers would appreciate it.

-- Jeff

3:53 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Greg -- No time to lose then. . . Paint, paint, paint!

Jeff -- Yep, one re-post coming up in the next few days.

Best Regards,

Stokes

5:34 PM

Conrad Kinch said…

Complements of the season to you both.

12:41 AM

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

The Eventual Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment. . .

The Anhalt-Zerbst regiment musters in the drill square to sort themselves into platoons and companies during the coming weeks Fall maneuvers if you will. A large dose of real life the last few days with the start of classes next Monday, various preparatory meetings, and finishing up a few other things this week. But, I managed to sort out 60 or so Minden Austrian infantry from the pile and get 'em stuck to temporary painting bases. Must carefully drill out the hands of several NCOs for flagpoles and pole arms this weekend before the usual basecoat. I'm thinking of mixing the usual white gesso with the usual light gray to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Applying both base- and undercoat in one fell swoop as my grandmother used to say. In the meantime, the recently finished squadron of Saxon cuirassiers has been placed carefully in one of the clear acrylic boxes on my shelves until I have the suitable flag to affix. -- Sto...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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