Food that sings to your soul

Handmade gingerbread from Kuna's Pure Food

Several years ago, we spent a magical white Christmas with my friend Klara and her family in Klatovy, a storybook town a couple of hours out of Prague. 

Although we couldn't communicate with words, Klara's mother spoke straight to my heart with her intricate, handmade gingerbread decorations. The recipes and designs have been used to decorate trees in Czech for centuries, and they capture the magic of Christmas in a way that $5 a dozen baubles from the Warehouse just can't. On the day we left she presented us with a gingerbread house complete with a tea light candle inside that lit up the windows and blew smoke out the chimney. If it hadn't been so warm, cinnamony and delicious I would have kept it forever. 

Klara recently followed her husband across the world to Australia, and I was so delighted when I learnt that she has started a little business selling handmade gingerbread treats for Christmas. Every item is baked, decorated and wrapped by Klara herself, and the detail is incredible. In a world of fast, furious, cheap and cheerful, her gingerbread is infused with centuries of tradition and love. For those of you based in or around Melbourne, Klara will be at the Geelong Artifact Market (18th November), Piccadilly Market in Geelong (20th November) and at Magnolia Square in Melbourne (1-3rd December). For everyone else, if I get enough comments I will beg Klara for her recipe and post a how-to on Beaunz (bribery, yes, but I want to hear your voice too!) 

Tell me about your beautiful Christmas traditions, Beaunz belles?

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