We made our own German Christmas market!

When Germany's major cities announced that they'd be cancelling Christmas markets in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, it wasn't a surprise...but it still came as a blow to most of us who live there. A Christmas without markets in Germany is like Christmas without a tree anywhere else: it just feels wrong.

Cologne's Christmas markets pre-2020

We spent at least a couple of months after the announcement moping about it, and when the official start date of the markets in Cologne - towards the end of November - rolled around, we moped even harder.

Now though, with Christmas just days away, we've finally come to terms with our reality of being stuck at home in the midst of even harsher lockdown measures. There's little point venturing into the city - all non-essential stores a closed - but if you did, you'd find a modest little cluster of Christmas trees in the square beside the Dom - Cologne's Cathedral - where the famous Christmas market used to be. A scattering of stalls selling glühwein (mulled wine), candied almonds, wood-smoked salmon and sausages tried their luck for a couple of weeks before getting shut down, and now we're left with nowhere to get our market food fix.

German Christmases past

So we decided to make our own Christmas market.

We chose eight different delicacies that are commonly found at German Christmas markets - ones that we looked forward to each year and missed the most. And we decided to make them all from scratch.

Here's what we made, and how it compared to the real thing!

Reibekuchen

Reibekuchen are potato pancakes, and our absolute favourite Christmas market snack. It's our ritual to begin the Christmas market season with a plate of Reibekuchen and a glühwein in a boot-shaped mug at the quaint and traditional Rudolfplatz market. You make them by combining grated raw potatoes, onions, egg and flour, shaping them into palm-sized pancakes and frying them in oil. They're most commonly served with Apfelmus (applesauce) and a sprinkling of salt for an addictive sweet-savoury taste. We had our doubts about how our version of our favourite snack would turn out, but they ended up looking AND tasting exactly like the ones we devour every December! It was a Christmas miracle! Interested in trying it? We used this recipe (it needs translating from German, but it's very straightforward!)

Sausages

We made two popular styles of sausage for our Christmas market. First, a foot-long grilled sausage in a crispy bread roll less than half its size, topped with mustard and fried onion. We're not sure why these sausages are always served in such a tiny bun, but it's just the way it's always been!

We also made Currywurst, in which you take a sausage, chop it up into bitesize pieces, and douse it in Germany's famous curry ketchup sauce, finished with a sprinkling of curry powder. You can find Currywurst kiosks all over the city at any time of year, but they're a market staple, too!

Spaetzle

Spaetzle is a kind of rough egg noodle, and is commonly served covered in gooey melted cheese. We like ours fairly traditional, with bacon bits, fried onion and a dollop of sour cream. It feels super decadent, but hey - it's Christmas!

Garlic mushrooms

These button mushrooms doused in a sauce made from cream, herbs and garlic make the Christmas markets smell so good. I wish I was a fan of mushrooms so that I could have fully appreciated this dish (I always find the texture a bit too much!) but Patrick assures me they were amazing.

Gebrannte Mandeln

Otherwise known as candied almonds, it's impossible to avoid stalls selling these at any market! Although they come in all sorts of flavours - we've tried white chocolate coconut, salted caramel, amaretto, hot chilli, the list goes on - but the traditional flavour is more simple: cinnamon and sugar. We added a touch of Lebkuchen (gingerbread) spice to ours, too, just because! You make them by melting sugar and spices in water before stirring in the almonds and boiling for 25 minutes. As the boiling water evaporates, the sugar mixture becomes powdery again before melting for a second time and forming a crunchy, sweet candy layer around the almonds. We served them in paper cones, just like at the markets themselves!

Interested in trying it? We used this recipe (and it's in English!)

Lebkuchen

Lebkuchen, or German gingerbread, differs from American or British gingerbread in that it's soft and spongey rather than hard and crisp. Around Christmas time, you can be pre-mixed sachets of Lebkuchen spice at any supermarket, so making them wasn't as difficult as I expected! What I wasn't expecting was for them to turn out exactly like the ones on the markets! These always come with bright and gaudy royal icing designs and messages piped onto them, so I tried to replicate this as best I could!

Interested in trying it? We used this recipe (again, needs translating from German, but there are only three simple steps!)

Schaumkuss (or Schokokuss)

These 'chocolate kisses' feature melt-in-the-mouth marshmallow coated in chocolate and often sprinkled with all kinds of toppings. Full disclaimer: we didn't make these ones! I was going to try experimenting with adding different toppings to the store-bought ones in the photo above, but we ended up having to cook so many things at once, I just didn't have the chance!

Glühwein

Mulled wine is the main reason most people visit the German markets. So we fished our boot-shaped mugs from Christmas markets past out of the back of the cupboard and enjoyed!

Even though everything turned out tasting just the way it should, it was missing that certain atmosphere: the air rich with smoky, wood-fired aromas and Christmas spice, the cosy feeling of fingers wrapped around a hot mug to stave off the chill in the air.

Perhaps we should have opened all our windows and donned our coats to get the full Christmas market experience!