Burnt Gingerbread Biscuits

Since the very beginning of November, granddad has only been playing Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Christmas carols. And grandma has been making us remove the shells from hundreds of nuts, every single evening, so that there are enough nuts for the twenty types of cake she is about to bake. It didn’t even have to be snowing outside here in Slovakia, in our household it was immediately evident that Christmas was coming.

In order to have everything ready in time, grandma had a baking plan and a cleaning programme. However, no one objected — obediently, we all helped her. We were always in the Christmas spirit for at least two months, not just one week a year.

Right now it was time to prepare the gingerbread biscuits. And since there weren’t many of us, they were baked from a double batch of dough. We were busy in the kitchen: grandma, mum, and me. We cut out the shapes, baked them, decorated them, painted them — everything that was needed.

Oh, what’s happened? Somehow, one of our batch of gingerbread biscuits got slightly burnt. Just a little bit. We looked at those unfortunate over-baked hearts, stars, and gingerbread houses.

Grandma said regretfully: “It would be a shame to throw them in the bin. Let’s put them in a box, maybe they will come in handy as Christmas tree decorations.”

So that’s what she did, and the preparations for Christmas continued. At once, everyone forgot about those slightly burnt gingerbread biscuits.

Aunt Adela, who lives in Prague, was supposed to be visiting us this Christmas. Aunt Adela works for a big company and lives in the city centre, in an apartment with a beautiful view. Her workload suddenly got a lot bigger over the Christmas…