Christmas Recipes & Ideas features delicious Christmas recipes and party ideas you can ejoy this Christmas(plus a little game to entertain you)!
Christmas dinner is a meal traditionally eaten at Christmas around the world. It often reflects the culture of the country in which it is eaten. For example, most Christmas customs in the United States have been adopted from those in the United Kingdom (though others have come from Italy, France, Scandinavia, and Germany.) Accordingly, the mainstays of the British table are also found in the United States: roast turkey (or other poultry), beef, ham, or pork; stuffing (or 'dressing'), mashed potatoes and gravy, squash, roasted root vegetables are common. Common desserts include pumpkin pie, plum pudding or Christmas pudding and mince pies. In the South, coconut cake, pecan pie, and sweet potato pie are also common.
The centerpiece of a sit-down meal varies on the tastes of the host but can be ham, roast beef, or goose, particularly since turkey is the mainstay at dinner for the American holiday of Thanksgiving in November, around one month earlier. Regional meals offer diversity. Virginia has oysters, ham pie, and fluffy biscuits, a nod to its very English 17th century founders. The Upper Midwest includes dishes from predominantly Scandinavian backgrounds such as lutefisk and mashed rutabaga or turnip. In some rural areas, game meats like elk, opossum or quail may grace the table, often prepared with recipes that are extremely old: it is likely that similar foodstuffs graced the tables of early American settlers on their first Christmases.
As for dessert, Christmas cake is a type of fruitcake served at Christmas time in many countries. A Christmas cake may be light or dark, crumbly-moist to sticky-wet, spongy to heavy, leavened or unleavened, shaped round, square or oblong as whole cakes, cupcake, or petit fours, with marzipan, icing, glazing, dusting with icing sugar, or plain. If a Christmas cake is covered in icing, it is quite common for it to be decorated - models of houses, of fir trees or of Santa Claus may be in the array of decorations.
A particular favourite of many is the traditional Scottish Christmas cake, the Whisky Dundee. As the name implies, the cake originated in Dundee and is made with Scotch whisky. It is a light and crumbly cake, and light on fruit and candied peel—only currants, raisins, sultanas and cherries. This Christmas cake is particularly good for people who don't like very rich and moist cakes.
In the middle of the spectrum is the mincemeat Christmas cake, which is any traditional or vegetarian mincemeat, mixed with flour, eggs, etc., to transform it into a cake batter; or it can also be steamed as a Christmas pudding.
Coins were also occasionally added to Christmas cakes as well as Christmas puddings as good luck touch pieces. The usual choices were silver 3d piece, or sixpences, sometimes wrapped in greaseproof paper packages.
In Yorkshire, Christmas cake, as with other types of fruit cake, can be eaten with cheese, such as Wensleydale.
A cake that may also be served at Christmas time in the United Kingdom, in addition to the traditional Christmas cake, is the cake known as a "chocolate log". This is a Swiss roll that is coated in chocolate, resembling a log.
Nowadays though, the more creative the Christmas dessert, the better.. since of course, December is the best time of the year for indulging in dessert.
Our Christmas Recipes & Ideas app presents some wonderfully festive & deliciously beautiful Christmas dinner, dessert and party ideas plus recipes!! Merry Christmas!!!
