Happy New Year! I hope you all had restorative, calming breaks. Max was home for 16 blissful days and we enjoyed every single one. Even Hugo played along and stopped waking up at 5:00 am, for which we are both endlessly grateful. We may even buy him a pony in gratitude? A tiny motorcyle? His very own African elephant baby?

I know it is hopelessly unhip to admit to eating healthfully in January, but I can't help it. In the grand German tradition, we started eating piles of Christmas cookies all the way back on the first Advent and by the time New Year's rolled around, after the roasts and the jelly doughnuts and the Stollen and panettone and everything else, it would have been a freaking miracle if our pants weren't tight. Ahem. My pants. Also, I now have that sort of unpleasant sensation of being completely sugared out. Of being sated down to the tips of my toes. Best remedied by eating lightly and cleanly and by getting out and moving.

But I was invited to a lunch party yesterday and was tasked with bringing dessert. What was I going to do? I couldn't bring myself to even make a pan of brownies. (The last pan I made, David's dulce de leche brownies, was just after New Year's and while they were perfect, I couldn't bring myself to eat more than a few bites. Like I said, sugared out! To the tips of my toes!)

Instead, inspired by something I read online from Amanda Hesser about a reinvention of that old Southern dessert ambrosia, a mix of sliced oranges and shredded coconut, I turned to David Tanis's lovely book, A Platter of Figs. David Tanis updates the dish with just a few simple touches, turning it from simple and retro into something far more elegant, complex and delicious.

Instead of just using oranges, David has you use grapefruits, blood oranges, kumquats and navels (I didn't have navels, so used clementines). The grapefruits are segmented, the oranges are peeled and sliced and the kumquats are sliced, so you not only have a whole dance of different citrus flavor going on, but layers of texture too, especially once the soft pineapple and spiky coconut are tossed in. Some versions of the old ambrosia add canned crushed pineapple to the mix, but here, David has you dice up fresh pineapple, which adds an element of pure sweetness to the dish. And instead of sweetened shredded coconut, use unsweetened shredded coconut (I used a mix of flaked and shredded, just for fun). David's original recipe makes an enormous amount of ambrosia, so I scaled down the citrus a bit to the quantities below and it served 6 of us at the end of a 3-course lunch quite well.

David's ambrosia is the perfect winter dessert - seasonal and juicy, deeply satisfying and delicious, and beautiful to boot. I'm in love.

But next week is my mother's birthday and I am, of course, in charge of dessert. And while I adored the ambrosia, I'm not sure it's birthday party material. I want to find something that's celebratory and special, but still relatively light. So what can I make? A wintery pavlova? An angel food cake? A towering croquembouche filled with nothing but sweet, delicious air? Help a girl out, folks!

David Tanis's Ambrosia
Adapted from A Platter of Figs
Serves 6

2 pink grapefruits
2 blood oranges
2 clementines
8 kumquats
1/2 ripe pineapple
Sugar, if necessary
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1. With a sharp knife, cut off the tops and bottoms of the grapefruits, blood oranges and clementines, then peel, making sure to remove all the white pith. Working over a bowl, section the grapefruit into wedges, cutting between the membranes. Before discarding, squeeze out the grapefruit carcasses into the bowl, they should yield quite a bit of juice. Slice the blood oranges and clementines into 1/4-inch rounds and add them to the bowl. Slice the kumquats into the thinnest rounds possible and add to the bowl. Peel and core the pineapple, then cut into small pieces and add to the bowl. With your (clean) hands, mix the fruits very gently. Taste the juice and if absolutely necessary, add a bit of sugar. Cover and set aside for up to several hours.

2. Just before serving, sprinkle the coconut over the salad. Toss gently and serve immediately.

Let's start this week off with dessert first, shall we? I don't think you should live a day longer without knowing about this chocolate cake.

On Saturday afternoon, we had friends over for lunch and after we'd finished a big pot of Moroccan stew and couscous I'd made, I brought out a cake, a chocolate cake that was almost flourless. Now, I'd set the heat too high when I'd first put the cake to bake in the oven and the top of the cake had burned ever-so-slightly before I'd realized my mistake and turned the temperature down. Also, I'd overwhipped the eggs by a second or two while preparing the batter and an ominous sentence in the headnote of the recipe gave me the sense that the cake was probably ruined already.

So I was feeling a little blue about the cake, if I'm honest. I had Max whip some cream and I told myself just to be cool as I put it down on the table. People were probably too full from lunch to have much dessert anyway.

But a few minutes later, as forks scraped through the first round of slices, the table went silent. The thing was, the cake was sort of incredible. It was rich but not heavy, powerful but not overwhelming. The texture was fabulous - velvety-soft, tasting much like the fudgiest brownie, but light and fluffy as a cake. (Incidentally, I don't think we could have eaten the cake without little dollops of unsweetened whipped cream, which provided a much-needed cooling effect. Proceed without at your own risk.)

My friend Philippe said that he thought it might be the best chocolate cake he had ever eaten. Philippe is half-French, so he knows from chocolate cakes. His wife Yvonne said it was definitely the best chocolate cake she'd ever eaten. Yvonne is a chocoholic, so she knows from chocolate cakes. Their son, Leo, 2 years old, had two whole slices and then practically licked his plate. (I would not have thought this cake would go over well with children, but there you have it, in addition to being French-friendly and chocoholic-friendly, this cake is also child-friendly.)

I found Evelyn Sharpe's French Chocolate Cake hiding out in the pages of The Essential New York Times Cookbook (from this article). It was apparently the first "flourless" chocolate cake the New York Times ever published. It's not really flourless, since it has a tablespoon of flour, but I can imagine you could substitute ground nuts without a problem. I chose it because it took hardly any time or effort (here's the whole process: melt chocolate and butter in a water bath, add egg yolks, plus a spoon of sugar and flour, then beat egg whites, fold into chocolate mixture, put in pan and bake, done).

Amanda Hesser stipulated using high-quality chocolate like Scharffen Berger, with somewhere between 65% and 70% cacao. But I ended up using the totally bog-standard dark chocolate bars you find in the baking aisles of German grocery stores that don't even have a brand-name - here's what they look like. They have only 55% cacao and the cake was inky-rich and dark and wonderful. I actually can't imagine using a higher-percentage cacao. (If you do go the higher-cacao route, then put some sugar in the accompanying whipped cream.)

Everyone followed Leo's lead and had another slice and before I knew it, all that was left was this one little sliver. I took a quick snap of it for you all before it disappeared, too.

And now I'm trying to figure out how to make up for lost time. French Chocolate Cake for Easter? For Hugo's first birthday? For our wedding anniversary? For, just because?

Evelyn Sharpe's French Chocolate Cake
Makes one 9-inch round cake

1 pound bittersweet chocolate (ca. 55% cacao)
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
4 eggs, separated
Unsweetened whipped cream

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Line the base of an 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper.

2. Melt the chocolate gently in the top of a double boiler over hot, not boiling, water, or more speedily in the microwave.

3. Remove the melted chocolate from the heat and stir in the butter, flour and sugar. Beat the yolks lightly and whisk into the chocolate mixture gradually.

4. Beat the egg whites until they hold a definite shape but are not dry and fold into the chocolate mixture. The beaten egg whites should be folded smoothly, quickly and easily into the chocolate mixture. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat; open the oven door, leaving it ajar, and allow the cake to cool in the oven.

5. The cake is best served a little warm with unsweetened whipped cream.

I'll bet you've been wondering where I've been, haven't you. Felled by the flu, perhaps, you think. Off visiting her husband in his faraway city, maybe. No, dear reader, I was right here the whole time, only instead of cooking and writing or cleaning up my desk space (urgh) during my spare time this past week, I was deep - deep - into Downton Abbey. Yes, it's true. I abandoned you for an English television show. Forgive me. I can't help it. It is just so good.

I'm almost at the end of Season 3 now (how, you fellow Downton freaks gasp? Right here. You're welcome, unless you want to get anything done again, ever, in which case, I'm sorry.) and am finally coming up for air and it occurred to me that it might be nice to, you know, get back to work again or at least vacuum the apartment so that my child doesn't start teething on dust bunnies, seeing as he's starting to learn how to scoot forwards and sideways all of a sudden. (And has two teeth! Two bottom teeth!)

I have cooked now and then in the past week, most notably last Sunday when I made my mother a birthday lunch consisting of salt cod (chewy!), a plethora of delicately steamed vegetables (pain in the necky!) and a big old bowl of mayonnaise (this one) that broke not once but twice before I found the best trick ever for saving broken mayonnaise. (There was a lemon tart, too, that was a disaster from start to finish, but I'm not going to dwell on that now, am I. Confectioner's sugar hid a multitude of sins and it was gobbled up in no time, thank goodness.)

Salt cod, cooked vegetables and boiled eggs served with a big bowl of garlicky mayonnaise is called le grand aïoli in southern France and during this very cold, very gray January, it was a welcome change from the usual meaty stew I would have thought to serve for a lunch party. All complaining aside, it was actually quite fun to cook, too. The salt cod soaked on the balcony for several days before the lunch and then only had to be briefly boiled and skinned and shredded the day of the party. I prepared the vegetables the morning of the lunch, roasting the beets in the oven to concentrate their sweetness, while doing the rest - Romanesco, small, sweet carrots, tiny potatoes, golden-yolked eggs and fennel wedges - one after another on the stove. And Max was home to entertain Hugo, so all was right with the world.

Well, until that mayonnaise broke. The first time, I tried to save it with an additional egg yolk (put it in a clean bowl, carefully whisking the broken mayonnaise into it until it's nice and thick again). But then it broke again. This time, I had no more egg yolks to rely on. Our guests were arriving and things were getting very hot under my collar. (Did I mention the lemon tart from hell? It was staring at me balefully from the kitchen counter, under its blanket of powdered sugar.)

I ran to the computer for help and found this tip: instead of an additional egg yolk, put a spoonful of mustard in a clean bowl and whisk in the broken mayonnaise. (The genius tip comes from none other than Julia Child, goddess of frazzled daughters trying to cook their mother's birthday lunches everywhere.) Max handed the baby off to a pair of eager hands and came in to help. He whisked while I poured the broken mayonnaise (is there anything more hideous?) into the bowl and, lo and behold, a thick, glossy, delicious mayonnaise emerged (and it didn't taste like mustard, in case you were wondering). I practically cartwheeled with joy.

Gently steaming the vegetables until they're just done ensures that they taste fresh and sweet - so good that they hardly need a thing to dress them except for a big dollop of mayonnaise. That mayonnaise ties all the things on the table together, the chewy cod and the rich, soft eggs, too. It's the base note of a delicious little symphony. I'd even go so far as to say that that it was a ray of sun straight from southern France on that cold Berlin day.

Four days until Christmas Eve, five days until Christmas Day. Are you all set, all ready? Are your presents purchased and wrapped and hidden away? Are you avoiding the kitchen or still churning out cookies and cakes and edible gifts like there's no tomorrow? (Not making a Mayan calendar joke, not making a Mayan calendar joke, not making a Mayan calendar joke...)

I'm very sorry to have to add to your load at this crucial moment before the holidays, when any moment of free time you might have is probably tied up with a million other things, but I don't really have a choice. Forgive me! You see, I made this fruitcake last week and it is so good, so perfect, so un-fruitcake-y and wonderful that the year cannot, must not, end without it on your holiday table. Okay? Okay.

I read about this lovely thing in the Washington Post, my ears perking up when the journalist said that it was responsible for her "fruitcake awakening". The cake required no alcoholic soaking, was not studded with any garishly colored cherries or bitter citrus peel and could be stored for at least two weeks. Plus, I could buy all the figs, raisins and nuts from the discount store around the corner from my house. Recipe kismet always feels so good, doesn't it?

Then, when I went and actually looked at the recipe, I had to read it twice. Were my eyes betraying me or were there no eggs and no shortening of any kind in this cake? No, I could read correctly. What it did have was an enormous amount of baking soda, plus the loveliest name I could think of. I don't know about you, but Arkansas Fig Fruitcake has such simple lyricism that I probably would have been moved to try it on account of the name alone.

So, here's what you do. You chop and simmer a bunch of figs with some sugar and water until they are soft. Then you purée them and measure out most of the purée (the rest is delicious stirred into your morning yogurt - cook's treat!). You mix the fig purée with walnuts or pecans, a box of raisins, two diced apples, what seems like an absurd amount of sugar (I think you could probably cut down on this if you wanted to, but I loved the recipe as is), flour, spices and the aforementioned soda, which you need in such ample quantities to help power up the dense, heavy dough. It's so dense and heavy that you shouldn't bother mixing this with anything but your hands - it will make any electric motor smoke. This part is messy.

You push the dough evenly into your pans (I happen to have one very large loaf pan - that kiwi in the first photo was meant to show you just how epically large my fruitcake was - but I'd recommend baking the cake in smaller pans for better gifting) and bake them for two hours at the relatively low temperature of 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Slowly, slowly, the cake rises and the edges caramelize in the oven heat. When it's done, the burnished top towers over the edge of the pan.

Cooled and sliced, it's remarkably light and incredibly fragrant and moist. It's hard to believe that nothing but fruit, really, gives the cake the moisture it needs. As it ages, it gets better and better - the flavors melding further, though I frankly don't know how this cake would ever last two whole weeks. And all you fruitcake skeptics out there: I'd wager a pretty penny that this is just the thing that could help you with your own fruitcake awakening. Tell me if any of you try it and are converted!

By the way, all that sugar doesn't actually result in a tooth-achingly sweet cake. What it does is give the cake this deep caramel flavor on top of all the other things going on: the gentle crunch of the fig seeds, the warmth of the spices, the satisfying heft of the crumb. It's so good that I served it as my birthday cake last week when I turned 35 (!). Who needs a chocolate layer cake when there's Arkansas Fig Fruitcake to be had?

Arkansas Fig Fruitcake
From Mother Linda
Makes one 9-inch round tube cake or two standard-sized loaves

3 cups (14 ounces) dried figs, stemmed and coarsely chopped
2 cups plus 6 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 cups water, plus more as needed
2 cups finely diced, peeled apple (about 2 apples)
15 ounces of raisins
2 cups pecans or walnuts, in halves or pieces
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking soda

1. Combine the figs, 6 tablespoons of the sugar and 2 cups of the water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring just to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until the figs are tender, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

2. Remove the saucepan from the heat and let the mixture rest for 10 minutes, then use an immersion blender on low speed to process the figs to a coarse puree, adding water as needed. Let cool. The yield is slightly more than 2 cups.

3. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Butter and flour a 9 3/4-inch tube pan, preferably one with a removable bottom, or two standard loaf pans.

4. Measure 2 cups of the fig puree and transfer to a very large mixing bowl along with the apple, raisins and nuts. Reserve the remaining purée for another use (like stirred into your morning yogurt). Stir to mix well.

5. Whisk together the flour, the remaining 2 cups of sugar, the cinnamon, cloves and salt in a separate large bowl until combined.

6. Combine the baking soda and the remaining 1/2 cup of water in a small bowl, stirring until the baking soda has dissolved. Stir this into the fruit mixture.

7. Add the dry ingredients to the fruit mixture and mix well. The batter will be extremely thick and heavy, so at this point it's easiest to mix it with your hands. You might need to add a couple tablespoons of water to moisten all the ingredients.

8. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan(s) and use a flexible spatula or your hands dipped in water to smooth the top. Bake for 1 3/4 to 2 hours or until a tester inserted near the middle of the cake comes out clean.

9. Cool for 30 minutes, then remove from the pan to cool completely. (If using a tube pan with a removable base, keep the cake on the base as it cools.) Wrap tightly and store at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.

Oof. Readers, Hugo was up four times last night (10:15 pm, 12:50 am, 3:00 am, and then 5:30 am, at which point he started to do this adorable cooing, chattering thing that really is the sweetest thing on the planet except that it's 5:30 in the morning, child, and you have kept me up ALL NIGHT GO BACK TO SLEEP GAH), so, actually, I thought if anything, this day's overwhelming emotion would be one of mild exasperation and slight crankiness (on my part). Instead, as the day wound down and we did our little nighttime ritual, I was overcome with melancholia. It's all going so fast, you see. Too fast.

He'll be six months next week. Wasn't he just born? Wasn't it just yesterday that I saw his little face for the first time? Already, I can list little things that he no longer does, that he's grown out of: No more funny wheezing when he naps in the stroller. No more falling asleep in my arms when I carry him around. No more needing to be nursed to sleep at night. I'm already starting to forget what he felt like in my arms when he couldn't hold his head up on his own. When I realized the other day that Hugo was no longer a newborn, and hadn't been one for some time, my mouth went all dry. Slow down, baby, I heard myself thinking, echoing millions of people before me. Slow down, please. Stay my tiny love a little while longer.

Following Hugo's lead, I put him down tonight for the first time without nursing him. I sang a song, stroked his head once or twice and then said good night and left the room. I was steeling myself for his tears as I walked out, but none came. I stood in the hallway for a while, listening to him coo and then grow quiet. I should have felt so proud, I know, of my boy, not even six months old, now able to fall asleep on his own. But all I wanted to do was cry.

Silly, right? I know. And yet. The heart is a funny thing.

Hoo! It's probably apparent to everyone that someone else here needs an early bedtime tonight. But before I go, I just need to tell you quickly about these cookies. The thing is, I'm pretty picky when it comes to Christmas cookies. I really mostly just like to eat the ones that Joanie makes. Every year, to be a good sport, I try out new ones, but they're mostly just for show. You know? I'd never really consider adding them to the lineup.

Until now. Seriously.

I'm sure you've heard all about Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's new cookbook, Jerusalem. It's on practically every Best-Cookbook-of-2012 list, on every food blog in creation, heck, there was even a profile of them in the New Yorker last week. I don't have a copy of the book yet, so I can't say a thing about it, really, except that the recipe for Spice Cookies alone (that I found online) is so good it's worth the price of the book alone. As my father likes to say, you really only need one good recipe to make a cookbook worthwhile.

Ottolenghi and Tamimi say that their spice cookies, stuffed with brandy-soaked currants, grated chocolate, winter spices and iced with a sharp, lemony glaze, are meant to be kissing cousins of that old German classic, Pfeffernüsse, and an Italian spice cookie that they found in Nancy Baggett's International Cookie Cookbook. I say that these spice cookies are one of my favorite things I've baked all year. And get this: I'm going to be taking some to Joanie's later this week, when we get together for another round of baking. I can't wait to see what she thinks of them.

The recipe is a little funny. It calls for only half an egg and a whopping 1 1/2 teaspoons of cocoa powder and you "soak" currants in brandy for all of ten minutes, which doesn't really plump a thing. But none of this matters. Just follow the instructions. Whisk together all the dry ingredients, then beat the butter with sugar and citrus peels and vanilla until a heady, fresh scent drifts upwards from your beaters. The dry ingredients are mixed into the wet until a dark, moody dough forms. It looks like freshly tilled earth. It smells like Christmas.

You form the dough into largish balls. I made the mistake of questioning the size of the balls that the authors call for. Surely, no one would want to eat a 5-ounce spice cookie,  I thought. I'm going to make one sheet of cookies as they call for and another in the bite-sizes that I'd like. Silly woman. Don't make my mistake. Make the cookies big.

[Freddie totally photo-bombing the cookie dough.]

When you bake the cookies, the dough balls collapse outwards and then puff up, little fissures forming on their tops. I'd err on the side of underbaking them ever-so-slightly - a few minutes too long in the oven and you'll end up with a too-dry cookie with too-browned bottoms. 15 minutes should be perfect.

While they're still warm, you make a lemon glaze and then spoon it over the cookies. I had to do this a few times (I suspect my cookies were still too hot) to get the thickness I wanted. If you're more patient than me, only once will probably do. Then you glue a few cubes of candied orange peel to the top of the cookies and you let them rest until they've cooled completely.

When you break one open, you might think they look a little dry. Maybe even a little boring. But one bite, one richly flavored bite with the faint zing of citrus and a winey pop of currant against the spiced, chocolatey dough, will cure you of that thought in an instant. The texture of these cookies is a revelation - velvety is the one word that keeps coming to mind. The thin cap of icing provides the most delicate of snaps. If you took away my beloved Lebkuchen for eternity and left these gems in their place, I'd be grateful. That's how good they are. You know how else good they are? So good I've decided not to bake a single other thing for Christmas except for them, again and again.

And with that, folks, I'm off to bed. My preshus will be up in a few hours to ruin my sleep and I must be prepared.

Ottolenghi's Spice Cookies
From Jerusalem: A Cookbook
Makes 16 large cookies
Note: I grated the chocolate by blitzing it to rubble in the food processor.

Cookies:
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons (125 grams) currants
2 tablespoons brandy
Scant 2 cups (240 grams) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons best-quality cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon each ground cinnamon, allspice, ginger, and nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 ounces (150 grams) good-quality dark chocolate, coarsely grated
1/2 cup (125 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup (125 grams) superfine sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest
1/2 large free-range egg
1 tablespoon diced candied citrus peel

Glaze:
3 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup (160 grams) confectioners’ sugar

1. Soak the currants in the brandy for 10 minutes. Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, spices, salt, and dark chocolate.

2. Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla, and lemon and orange zest to combine but don't aerate much, about 1 minute. With the mixer or beater running, slowly add the egg and mix for about 1 minute. Add the dry ingredients, followed by the currants and brandy. Mix until everything comes together.

3. Gently knead the dough in the bowl with your hands until it is uniform. Divide the dough into 1¾-ounce (50 gram) chunks and roll each chunk into a perfectly round ball. Place the balls on 1 or 2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing them about ¾ inch (2 cm) apart, and let rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

4. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Bake the cookies for 15 minutes, until the top firms up but the center is still soft. Remove from the oven. Once the cookies are out of the oven, allow to cool for only 5 minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack.

5. While the cookies are still warm, whisk together the glaze ingredients until a thin and smooth icing forms. Pour a tablespoon of the glaze over each cookie, leaving it to drip and coat the cookie with a very thin, almost transparent film. You may want to repeat this step for a thicker glaze. Top each cookie with 3 pieces of candied peel placed at the center. Leave to set and then serve, or store in an airtight container for a day or two.

Last Friday night, I put Hugo to bed and tip-toed out of the bedroom as I usually do, hearing him settle into his crib for the night as I closed the door behind me. I walked carefully down the hallway and into the warm, golden-lit living room where my mother sat on the couch, surrounded by the last few weeks of New Yorker issues. I waited twenty minutes, mostly for my own benefit, since nary a peep was coming from the back room, then put on my shoes, took the car keys and walked out the front door. For the first time since Hugo's birth, I was going out on my own.

Over the past few months, I'd left Hugo a handful of times with my mother or mother-in-law during the day when I had to run an errand or meet a journalist to promote the book. But I was never gone longer than an hour or two and I'd never left him in the evening before. Dinners out or a movie night with Max were a distant, hazy memory. But earlier that week, my friend Joanie had called me to say that the annual Springerle evening, when she and our friend Ann get together to make the molded, anise-flavored cookies for Christmas, had been moved up by a few weeks because she needed to have hand surgery in December. Did I want to come? Around 7:00 pm on Friday? She'd already asked my mother if she wouldn't mind babysitting. (Max was in Kassel.) With only a tiny squiggle of adrenaline at the thought of leaving Hugo at bedtime, I said yes.

When I got to Joanie's, things were already in full swing. In the kitchen, Joanie's mother-in-law's East Prussian gingerbread dough, so thick with honey and flour that Dietrich, her husband, had to use a drill to mix it, ripened on a chair wedged next to the fridge. It would get rolled out and cut the following week. The big batch of the Springerle dough, fluffy with beaten eggs and sugar, was in the living room on the dining table. Between Joan, Ann and my mother, their collection of wooden Springerle molds is practically museum-worthy. The wooden molds were spread out all over the table as Joanie and Ann worked, armed with little brushes, mounds of flour for dusting and sharp-pointed knives to clean out crevices if some errant dough got stuck.

First, they selected a mold. A shell, perhaps, or a lamb carrying a flag, or a winged angel. Then they dusted a bit of flour into the clean mold. After that, they pinched off a lump of dough corresponding in size to the mold, rolled it into an egg-like shape and then dusted that liberally with flour, too. The lump of dough then was pushed firmly onto and into the mold and the edges were trimmed. All that was left was to very carefully peel the formed dough off the mold and lay it onto the anise-strewn cookie sheet. We did this over and over again until all the dough was gone and the cookie sheets were filled with tiny masterpieces.

The unbaked cookies have to rest overnight before being baked. The key to Springerle is not letting them brown in the oven, though they do develop little "feet", like French macarons, as they bake. When they're done, Springerle look like they've been formed out of clay. This might lead you to think that they don't taste very good, but they are my favorite of all the Christmas cookies, delicate and sweet, with that haunting anise flavor. They store well and although they do get very hard with time, all you need to do is slip a slice of apple into their tin and they'll remain slightly cakey instead of rock-hard. (Though rock-hard is actually how I like them, the better for dunking into tea.)

When we were finished, we cleaned off the table, putting all the molds into the empty bowl, sweeping up the leftover flour, scraping the molds clean and wiping down the table. Then Joanie heated up a pot of borscht while Dietrich and I set the table. We ate the hot soup, dotted with spoonfuls of sour yogurt, with slices of dark bread. It was warm and cozy. As always, at Joanie's house, I felt my most calm and comfortable. But the minutes were ticking by and I soon found myself getting antsy, checking my watch. I wanted to be home again, just down the hall from my sleeping baby. So I said my goodbyes, got back in the car and drove down the emptying highway towards Charlottenburg.

Back home, things were as I had left them: My mother on the couch, Hugo asleep in his little crib. But it felt like the world had just expanded somehow. A tiny glimmer of my old life was visible again. Or, no, I guess I'd just seen a tiny glimmer of my new life, the one where Hugo no longer needs me near him 24 hours a day, where I can once again leave the house at times without him, feeling both liberated and like I've left a piece of me behind. It was thrilling and a little bittersweet, too.

Want to make your own Springerle?

King Arthur Flour

Martha Stewart

Food52

As promised, dear readers, I come bearing cake. Not just any cake, mind you, but the best banana cake the world has ever seen, if you will allow me some superlatives. This is not banana bread, in case you're wondering; it's nothing rustic and it's not remotely acceptable for breakfast. This is cake, rich and tender as all get-out and sporting a gorgeous cap of creamy-sour frosting.

To tell the truth, I made the cake for you. Because yesterday this blog turned six years old. Six. Six! If this blog was a child, it would be in first grade! It would be reading. And telling jokes! If this blog was a dog, it'd be middle-aged! I think that calls for some celebration. And what, pray tell, is a celebration without cake?

Six years is a long time. And it's a preposterously long time for a blog whose originator speculated it would barely last a year. The fact that it's still around and kicking and featuring unbelievably delicious cake is really, in no small part, due to all of you coming here and reading and cooking and commenting and all the rest of what you do. So I made you all a cake. You have no idea how much I wish I could have shared this actual cake with you, slice by slice.

When the book is published, do you know what I'm looking forward to the most? The book tour, is what. Because then I'll finally be able to meet some of you in person instead of just sort of vaguely knowing that you're out there. In fact, when the going gets rough, that's what I think about, I really do. It peps me right up. Puts a spring in my step.

But back to the cake. Hoooo, people. The cake. It is so good. It's super-tender and amazingly not-too-sweet and fragrant with bananas and velvety and moist and the frosting (which I changed a little from the original recipe, to make it a little less sweet) is the perfect foil for it, though I suppose if you left off this frosting and topped it with, say, something dark and glossy like this, I wouldn't kick it out of bed either. My friend Suzy, who I consider to have terrifyingly high standards when it comes to food, gave it high praise. As in, halfway through her first slice, she stopped eating, put her fork down and fixed me with a serious look. Then she said, "This is really good." Then she went home with a doggie bag and ate another piece after dinner which, according to her, never happens. Never ever.

The recipe comes from Los Angeles's Clementine Bakery and is, really, the holy grail of banana cakes, as far as I'm concerned. It even keeps well for a day or two, though it beats me how on earth you'd manage to keep it hanging around for more than a day, unless you were the kind of nut who bakes cakes for her blog and then has to run around the city delivering leftovers for friends lest she eat the entire thing all by herself. And best of all, it is so easy to make - no layers, no complicated mixing techniques. Just a bowl, some ripe bananas, a mixer and you.

I lessened the amounts of cream cheese, butter and sugar in the frosting, but then I added a little extra crème fraîche instead of sour cream, because I think that deeply creamy, sour flavor would be nice to underline. Plus it gave the frosting a little sensuous floppiness, instead of leaving it a stiff spackle. Which I think is sort of crucial when it comes to simple cakes like this one.

Now go forth and bake! And thank you for being here. And happy blog birthday to, uh, me!

Clementine Bakery's Banana Cake
Makes one 10-inch round cake plus a few extra cupcakes, or one 9 x 13-inch rectangular cake
The original recipe is here.

Cake:
2 2/3 cups pastry flour or 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour minus 2.5 tablespoons
2 2/3 cups sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 large or 4 small very ripe bananas
3 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Into a large bowl sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, mash the bananas with an electric beater until smooth. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, until each is completely incorporated, then mix in the buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Finally, mix the dry ingredients into the batter just until thoroughly combined.

3. Pour into a 9-by-13-inch greased pan or a 10-inch round cake pan (you might have enough batter leftover for a few spare cupcakes). Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until golden-brown on top, a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the cake springs back when lightly touched. Cool on a rack.

Frosting:
6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 ounces butter, room temperature
1/3 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons crème fraîche

In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a medium bowl with a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth and there are no lumps. Add the butter and whip until incorporated, then add the powdered sugar and the sour cream. Beat until the frosting is very smooth and lump-free. Frost the top of the cooled cake, then slice and serve.