Father Christmas C'est Nous

Salted Caramel Sauce

Today is the boys’ last day of school and tomorrow we head to Italy. (For more on our Christmas traditions there, I wrote a bit about them in

Colu Henry

’s lovely newsletter earlier this week. ) Today is a frenzy of cleaning the apartment before we leave—because there is nothing worse than coming home to a messy apartment—packing, last-minute phone calls and errands. Plus, because we’re only traveling with carry-on luggage, we’re giving the boys “our” gifts tonight. (We’re saving the big gift for Father Christmas to give them in Italy. Obviously, Hugo knows that Father Christmas c’est nous, but Bruno hasn’t quite figured it out yet, so we are all very much enjoying the anticipation.)

As usual, the bulk of my gift-giving is focused on books. This year, I did most of my book-buying at Thalia and one of my favorite bookstores in the world, Golden Hare Books (a few out-of-print books were purchased at World of Books and Medimops). To share just a few, in case you need inspiration or just like knowing these things, for our upcoming trip to Scotland, Max is getting Lochs & Legends. I also bought him the German translation of North Woods. Bruno is getting the first volume of The Swifts (in German). Hugo is getting Davide Morosinotto’s latest novel. I bought my bestie Rhine Journey and another dear friend got the wonderful Zao Fan: Breakfast of China. My mother is getting Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, though I really want it for myself. I also bought Jess Elliott Dennison’s Midweek Recipes. Much more on my year in books will be in the next newsletter, which I will send out before the New Year.

Last December, I was feeling quite out of sorts. The mania of the month felt both menacing and overwhelming. At one point, in despair, I literally sat down and wrote myself an email about how to better prepare for the month in 2024. And wouldn’t you know, writing that email was actually helpful?! This time around, December didn’t catch me off-guard. I felt much better prepared and therefore, more importantly, far calmer about the month, despite the noise and clamor. Beyond the actual practicality of doing the things I had written down in the email, the thing that steadied me the most was the fact that I had done something to take care of myself. Every time I thought about that email, written to myself at such a different time, I felt a kind of warmth around my heart, a gentle beam of light radiating quietly through my body. Is this what self-love feels like? I have written myself another email for next year and I’m already excited to come across it next fall.

A stable of salted caramel jars on the balcony

Before we go, I wanted to share the edible gift that I recently made in bulk (9 or 10 jars in total!) and have been giving out to friends, neighbors, bus drivers and cleaners since then. At Thanksgiving, I bought too much heavy cream that we didn’t end up using. I felt pained about letting it go to waste, but we don’t use cream at all in daily life. When Jenny mentioned the idea of making salted caramel sauce with leftover Thanksgiving cream, it felt like kismet! Ultimately, I ended up using Chef Lindsay Farr’s excellent recipe, which is handily scaled up depending on how much cream you have on hand.

Lindsay has you warm the cream, butter and salt in one pot while caramelizing the sugar in another, larger pot. When the sugar is the color you want it to be, you add the cream mixture carefully to the sugar mixture. I made this twice and both times I made a mess when pouring the cream into the hot sugar. The mixture bubbled up into a terrifying volcano, splattering everywhere, but the second time around, the volcano was slightly smaller because I whisked in the cream mixture in small pours, rather than pouring it in all at once. Also, in the second batch, once the hot cream was entirely whisked into the sauce, I added an additional 1/4 to 1/2 cup of cold heavy cream to the sauce and I ended up liking the well-rounded flavor of the finished sauce a bit more than the first batch.

Either way, once the sauce has been thoroughly whisked and is creamy and smooth, pour it into clean jars. Let the jars cool completely, then cap them and store them in the fridge for two months. (I store them on our balcony, which is colder than the fridge these days.) If you don’t manage to gift them all before Christmas, you can freeze the sauce indefinitely. To make the sauce extra-gifty, you can put the jars in a plastic treat bag and tie with twine. Here’s the recipe again: Lindsay Farr’s Salted Caramel Sauce. For your notes: I skipped the vanilla and used the dry caramel method.

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