Rebecca in Nymphenburg

And a recipe for jam-filled thumbprint cookies.

Photo by Sid Saxena on Unsplash

Rebecca was particularly hungry today. She’d only had a little muesli for breakfast, but what she really wanted was some toast with jam, or even a donut. She was particularly fond of Krapfen, those no-hole fried donuts that most German bakeries made quite well. And when she could find one that was freshly baked, with apricot jam that would ooze out after the first bite, well, it was simply delicious.

Rebecca had moved back to Munich, Germany, six months ago, after realizing that because of her great-grandmother Anna, she could qualify for German citizenship and still keep her American citizenship. If she wanted to. The paperwork she had to complete to get where she was now was lengthy, but luckily, all the documents she had to fill out were in English. This helped tremendously, since she was embarrassed to admit that even though she had moved back to Munich, her German language skills were mediocre at best.

To keep her mind off her rumbling stomach, she decided to go out for a walk. Rebecca put on her winter coat, a hat, gloves, and even a scarf before she unlocked the door to her apartment. She had gotten lucky. A rental in her price range (1,095 euros/month), with a two-year lease, was available in a quiet neighborhood of Munich. The apartment was on Nibelungenstrasse, and when the rental agent had told her the name of the street, she had to laugh. She wasn’t a fan of opera, but she was at least familiar with Richard Wagner’s epic musical drama, The Ring of The Nibelung.  

When she took the time to do a bit of research on German mythology, it turned out that a long time ago there were some dwarfs, called the Nibelungs, who lived in a town called Nibelheim. Apparently, they weren’t happy little dwarfs, but evil ones who hoarded a bunch of gold and other treasures. Nibelheim was also called the “land of mist” which she found a bit odd since she didn’t think it was particularly foggy on any one morning in her new neighborhood. But more importantly, she was hoping that just by living on a street with the same name as the dwarfs would bring her gold and treasures as well.

One of the treasures she immediately discovered next to her new apartment was a Baroque church with a very pretty, white and gold-painted onion dome. She was less enthusiastic, however, about the bells that were rung from the church tower - every hour from 6 am. to midnight, seven days a week. At first, she tried closing the heavy-duty blinds in the apartment to muffle the sound, but the only thing it did was make the room pitch black.

Rebecca sighed thinking about the sound of the bells and the darkness she felt both in her apartment and her mind. And even though she felt her rent was reasonable, living in Europe was much more expensive than she had anticipated.  She remembered a time when you could go out and meet a friend for a drink, or a small bite to eat, even if you didn’t have a lot of money. Now, she found herself mentally justifying the price of each item she’d pick up at the local supermarket, or at a farmer’s market if she wanted something a little more exotic.

It's not that she didn’t like the food in Germany. She did. But the restaurants closest to her new apartment were just kind of boring. There was a pizza place she liked to go to on occasion, but they never changed their menu. So, she was always stuck ordering the same pizza Margherita with a green salad. Then there was a no-frills doner kebab joint that had okay gyros. But if you ordered fries, they insisted on squirting a curry-laden mayonnaise on them, which just made the potatoes unbearably soggy. Then there were the traditional German restaurants. Most served a variation of schnitzel (breaded and fried), sausages (boiled or grilled), and dumplings (potato, bread, or even liver), all doused with the same brown mushroom gravy. The only reliable thing she realized, in all of the latter places, was dessert. And nine times out of ten, it would outshine any previous course she had consumed.

That’s why Rebecca knew that if she ordered apple strudel with whipped cream, or as the Germans would say, mit Schlag, it would not only be delicious but worth waiting for. Suddenly, Rebecca remembered the tense scene in Quentin Tarantino’s movie, Inglourious Basterds when Mélanie Laurent was told to “wait for the cream” by Christoph Waltz before she had a bite of strudel. Rebecca, like the character Shosanna that Mélanie played, seemed to always be hungry for that perfect bite as well.

As Rebecca went down the stairs, she realized she had drastically overdressed. It was December, but it felt more like a spring day. She unzipped her coat and looked up at her balcony. Then she looked over at her neighbor’s balcony. Her neighbor, as she did every morning, had put her very large, pillowy comforter over the railing. Rebecca had learned that this was a custom, in many parts of Germany, to “air” out the bedding from the night before. Rebecca found this odd, especially since she remembered simply taking her blankets and even a quilt to a dry cleaner back when she was still living in Brooklyn. But that, like her German language classes, seemed years ago.

Rebecca started walking down her street to see Schloss Nymphenburg, the 18^th century palace of the Bavarian royal family. Normally at this time of year, the canals would have already been frozen, and there might have even been an ice skater or two. When she had first lived in Munich as a young child, Rebecca remembered that the canals were always frozen. Her mother had encouraged her to try and skate, too, and had even told her the story of Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates. But as much as she tried, her skates just wobbled, and she ended up on her behind one too many times. Luckily, her mother had the foresight to pack a thermos filled with hot chocolate. So, Rebecca was more than happy to just stand on the frozen grass next to the canal and simply watch the other skaters.  

In less than two weeks it would be Christmas. Rebecca hadn’t spent Christmas by herself in a while. She was wondering whether she should just ignore the holiday all together. When she was still living in Brooklyn, with a boyfriend at the time, they had alternated spending Christmas holidays with a variety of relatives. Then the boyfriend decided that she wasn’t the “one” for him and she was left alone.

She remembered that first Christmas without him, and she decided to go on with the holiday and celebrate it the best way she could. She bought a duck and roasted it in her tiny oven which caused all the smoke alarms in her apartment to go off. But she didn’t care. She poured herself a glass of wine and opened the windows. She fried little goat cheese buttons in olive oil and plated them with some fresh Bibb lettuce. She had made a mushroom risotto, too, but cheated by just using regular rice she had in her cupboard, rather than the fancy arborio kind.

Earlier in the week, she had made two kinds of cookies - amaretto butter and dark chocolate chip. She didn’t want to eat them all by herself, so, she wrapped some of the cookies in parchment, tied a ribbon around each bundle, and knocked on some of her neighbor’s doors. She remembered fondly that the ones who opened their doors were touched by her home-baked goodies.

She wasn’t sure what she would do this year. But at least being in Munich she knew that the Christmas spirit was a lot bigger than it had been in Brooklyn. Last Christmas Eve she had reluctantly turned on the television and had seen Will Ferrell in that movie, Elf. But suddenly she blanked, what was the elf’s name?

Rebecca approached the palace grounds and was looking forward to coming back in the spring when all the flowers would start to bloom, and she could “ooh and ahh” over the colors and the scent. After she had first arrived in June, she was walking through the gardens and saw quite a few brides all lined up at the bottom of the palace stairs. Apparently, they were waiting their turn to be photographed at the top of the stairs, the castle being the perfect Cinderella-inspired backdrop.

Seeing even one bride, let alone more than half a dozen, made Rebecca’s heart skip a little since she still hadn’t gotten over the breakup with the boyfriend. She had also found out recently that not only had he gotten married after he left her, but he had quickly sired a baby daughter, too. She wondered if the brides she saw that day had the fairytale wedding and marriage they probably had all imagined.

It started to get windy, so Rebecca zipped up her coat. She started to walk a bit faster when she saw some swans in a pond in front of the palace. They seemed perfectly at peace, even if they were just swimming in circles. Occasionally, one of them would dip their beak into the water, perhaps looking for a tasty morsel of grass, or even an insect to eat. The swans made her think of that story, The Ugly Duckling. Didn’t her mother try to get her to read some of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales one Christmas? She remembered at the time that she was much more interested in looking at the pictures than reading the book. And wait, wasn’t there a musical with Danny Kaye playing Hans, the cobbler, too?

She looked up at the big palace windows and remembered reading that King Ludwig was born there in August of 1845. He was called “The Swan King” and “The Mad King.” Both names appropriate, she presumed, for a monarch who liked to spend his money on art, architecture, and funding Richard Wagner’s creative musical genius. She started to think of another castle King Ludwig had built - Neuschwanstein. She had visited that castle many years ago and was dismayed to hear the Americans on the tour with her say “But it’s just like Disney!”

Rebecca heard the sound of her feet go crunch, crunch, as she made her way through the gravel leading to the back of the castle and even more gardens. Someone had strung a strand of lights on one of the park’s nude female statues. She wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a nod to the Christmas season, or perhaps, they felt the statue deserved a glittery necklace. The boyfriend had given her a necklace once that she didn’t like very much, and before she moved back to Munich, she had simply thrown it away.

Thinking about the necklace gave her an idea though. Why was she walking around the castle grounds when she could be at the Christmas market in Munich’s main square looking at all the lights? She turned around and walked quickly to the nearest subway station. Twenty minutes later she was looking up at the New Town Hall (Neues Rathaus) and inching her way with tourists and locals to look at the market’s many stalls.

Rebecca remembered the smells of the spiced wine (Glühwein) and the taste of burnt sugar almonds (Gebrannte Mandeln) from her childhood. After a while, she lost count of how many nutcrackers and nativity figures she saw.  She followed her nose to a bakery and was overwhelmed with the choices. There were gingerbread and butter cookies, cinnamon stars, powder sugared crescents, and Christmas stollen, too.

Rebecca suddenly decided to go back to her apartment. She realized that she had all the ingredients to make her own cookies. Could she make a whole bunch and give them to her new neighbors? Even the ones who bizarrely hung their quilts out to air? And then she remembered something else. The name of the elf in the movie was Buddy! And one of his jobs, with the help of a Clausometer, was to make sure that the Christmas spirit in New York City didn’t fall below 90.  

She didn’t think she would need such a device after being back in Munich. But she definitely needed a really good cookie. Maybe something filled with apricot jam like the Krapfen she had craved earlier in the day. That would be her own dwarf-inspired gold treasure.

Rebecca’s Jam-Filled Thumbprint Cookies

Bake at 350 degrees. Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon salt

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

Apricot or raspberry jam

Chopped walnuts or pecans.

1.     Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

2.     Add egg, vanilla and salt. Mix on medium speed until combined.

3.     With mixer on low, add flour in 2 batches, mixing until incorporated.

4.     Form dough into 1-inch balls and roll balls in nuts, coating completely.

5.     Place balls on parchment-lined baking sheets.

6.     Use thumb or spoon to make indentations in cookie. Fill with jam.

7.     Bake until firm to the touch, 12-16 minutes.

8.     Cool on racks and enjoy!

Recipe courtesy of Mary Ann Drago Rosenfeld, 12/31/2004.