The conditions are not exactly Christmassy at the moment. But no snow also means time for some contemplative activities, such as baking cookies and fitting ski boots. In both cases, the essential utensil is the oven and that's why it's our Gear of the Week!
You usually save the good things until last, but this time we recommend starting with baking the cookies so that you can enjoy the first, perhaps still warm, cookies while waiting for the inner shoes to cool down!
Baking biscuits
Ingredients:
- 130 g flour
- 200 g granulated sugar
- 60 g unsweetened cocoa
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 pinch of salt
- 60 g butter (room temperature)
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
- 4 tablespoons icing sugar
Preparation:
Mix the flour, granulated sugar, cocoa, baking powder, salt and butter in a bowl. Beat the eggs and add to the mixture together with the vanilla sugar.
Place the dough in the freezer for approx. 10 minutes or in the snow for a few minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
Put the powdered sugar in a bowl and dust your hands with a little powdered sugar. Roll the dough into small balls and roll them in the powdered sugar. Place the balls about 4-5 cm apart on the baking tray and bake for about 8-10 minutes. Leave the cookies to cool and enjoy with family and friends after a great day on the mountain.
Baking inner boots
Ingredients:
- 2 pieces of thermoformable inner boots
- 2 pieces of ski boot liners to match the inner boots
- 1 roll of Leukotape or similar
- absorbent cotton pads in various sizes
- pieces of hard foam
- 1 pair of scissors
- 1 cutter
Preparation:
First of all: thermo-fitting inner shoes is not the easiest exercise in the freeride do-it-yourself 1x1. If done incorrectly, you could potentially ruin your good ski boots. We therefore recommend that you follow the manufacturer's instructions and get tips from your trusted specialist retailer!
Preheat the oven to approx. 90-105° C (temperature specifications vary from manufacturer to manufacturer).
In the meantime, cover ankles, toes and pressure points with absorbent cotton or appropriately cut foam as required.
Carefully put on ski socks and check again that none of the pads have slipped in the covered areas. Always remove the footbed from the inner boot.
Place the baking paper in the oven (if you forget the boot and something melts, you will not only have a potentially broken ski boot, but also a messy oven).
Now carefully place the inner boot in the oven. Make sure that any tabs on the tongue do not touch the heating coils on the ceiling of the Barck tube!
Now bake the inner boot in the oven for approx. 7-10 minutes (times vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.). Here you can find an example from Black Diamond).
Remove the inner shoes from the oven and now place the shells, upside down, briefly in the oven (if something goes wrong and something melts on the shell, at least it's not the sole. In the worst case scenario, you would be standing at an angle in the binding) while you put on the inner shoes (if you normally have the inner shoes in the shell when putting them on, this step is not necessary).
Now place the footbeds in the inner shoes and carefully put on the inner shoes so that the pads do not slip on the taped areas.
Remove the shells from the oven, step into the shells with the inner boots and close the buckles slightly to medium.
Now it's time to wait in a relaxed downhill position until the ski boots have cooled down. Depending on the temperature during baking, this will take between 15 and 30 minutes.
Once the boots are fully adjusted, we recommend enjoying a perfect powder day.
The PowderGuide team wishes you good luck and a Merry Christmas!
