Christmas time

This year the holidays were bitter-sweet. 

We certainly missed being away from family, 

but thanks to loving friends and technology

we were able to celebrate Christmas with an adopted family

and talk to all of our family around the world :)

Traditional Swiss Christmas eve complete with 

real candles on the tree,

cheese fondue dinner,

Christmas carols,

A Charlie Brown Christmas....

and late night pillow wars...

We eventually fell asleep around 3 am.

Yep, I got to skype with the coolest person I know.  

And she comes home in 4 months. 

NBD. 

Snow

Zurich is one of the least likely places in Switzerland to get snow. 

There is usually snow only once or twice a season, around February. 

2 days after Christmas it started snowing.

It didn't stop for 4 days. 

Zurich

December 26

December 27

Bonstetten

(hills west of Zurich) 

December 26

December 27

Multiply the snow seen above by 4 

and that is about what it looked like by New Years Eve. 

It was magical.

The snow has since melted in Zurich, but we cannot wait for the next snowfall.  

Macaron Makin'

  Just give us some ingredients, 

a well equipped kitchen, 

and 7 hours 

and we can have a hundred or so delicious french macarons ready for you. 

The magic is all in the tedious bit leading up to the piped tray below, 

but our hands were too busy to take pictures. 

Plus,

we can't reveal our secrets ;)

Voila!  Peppermint and Salted Caramel macarons. 

The salted caramel are our specialty.  

This time we made the caramel from scratch - 

oh my goodness delicious.

I'm never buying caramel again.

Of course, 

after a long night of baking, 

we had to try out our competition. 

We stopped by Laudree to pick up a salted caramel and they were sold out -

but the silver foil vanilla macaron was heavenly. 

Overall - our macarons take a pretty close second to Laudree. 

We have baked macarons for 

1 baby shower, 

1 Christmas party, 

1 prize package

and we have a second baby shower in the works. 

So seriously.  

Should we start a bakery?