Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Traditional Christmas cake or something different
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
My mum always makes chocolate bread and butter pudding with rum for dessert at Christmas. She makes it the day before, so the alcohol has time to mingle with the chocolate. It's gorgeous.
We have the christams cake with the cheese so people just help them self throught out the day.
Christams pudding is made by my mother this sunday - It's yummy she doesn't use flour it's brown bread in hers.
I'm at the in-laws this year and my Hubby and I are cooking so it'll be stress free (we keep my mother out of the kinchen, she s fab cook but gets herself in a tizz if it's not the best christams lunch ever). The most important thing is there is lots of time to watch old movies and drink bucks fizz!
home made Christmas cake for us. Did it end of September
stollen is nice though
I'm not a big fan of any of them, but hubby always bought an M&S Christmas Cake, and scoffed the lot.
He's now been diagnosed with Coeliac disease, so this year I'm planning one of these or one of these.
Nessie - they look delicious - I'm coming round to yours.
I make a lemon polenta cake occasionally which uses polenta (obviously) and ground almonds.
I've used ground almonds in flour free puds before but never mashed potato, have you tried the cake, Nessie?
We have a pannettone for cake after I realised no-one was eating traditional cake. For pudding, I've either bought individual luxury ones from M&S so everyone can have their favourite version, or made something totally different, like sticky toffee pud or a choc & cherry torte thing <drool>
Christmas for me starts in about July, when I get all my recipe books out, my big Christmas planner and a bottle of good wine. Open wine, open planner, flick through recipes, so by the end of the weekend everything's planned, meals and shopping lists. I sometimes put a Christmas CD on in the background. This all dates from the times when we were strapped for cash and needed to spread the costs out a bit (still do TBH) and when my parents used to visit on alternate years. I liked to make sure they didn't get the same style dishes each time they came down, so wrote the recipes in a menu style in a big notebook. At the back of the book I've got lots of recipes I use regularly so I don't have to seach through hundreds of magazines to find favourites.
When we had our really big freezer, I would freeze up as many dishes as I could so there was more time for drinking over Christmas, but this year I'll be making from fresh.
Just checked, I started keeping the book in 1995.
report back please Nessie
Prawn cocktail and black forest gateaux, Kwilter
I've done both of those cakes - YUM!!
You can use shop-bought ground almonds in place of the hazelnuts for convenience - it changes the flavour a bit, but you still get a very nice result.
You can make a traditional Christmas cake gluten free - the flour in it is just there to bind the fruit, really, so you can change it for gluten-free flour without any trouble. I personally don't like the taste of GF flour, but you don't notice it in Christmas cake.
Can I advise against shop-bought gluten-free Christmas puddings? *shudder* Horrible!!
Apparently M&S do a GF Christmas cake - not sure what it'll be like, but I'm sure hubby will give it a go.
I have some Juvela flour (washed wheat stuff) so I could try that.
I have, however, never made a Christmas cake in my life...................
You should make one! They're so easy - can't really go wrong. Most of the common cake making errors don't really apply here - the cake doesn't have to rise, so it can't fail to rise, or sink and it won't go tough from over-mixing as there is no gluten in the flour.
And the smell as it cooks is fantastic. Well worth the effort for that alone
i have a recipe for a chocolate xmas cake - out of a sainsburys magazine from years ago i think
it is still a fruit cake but with dark chocolate
it's gorgeous - but does not keep like a normal xmas cake
on xmas day i always find i am too bloated to eat anything else - we always have aplan for pud, but it never happens
i make flour free chocolate brownies to take over to my mate's house on nyd as her daughter is has coeliac disease
they always go down well and i actually think they are nicer than the flour based ones as the freshly ground nuts make them more moist
(how many DE points there???)
i use the feezer for the cranberry sauce - because cranberrys sell out near to xmas so as soon as they appear in the shops i buy them and make it and freeze batches - not so much for the dinner but for turkey, brie and cranberry sandwiches - which i love almost as much as xmas dinner
and i make the stuffing balls and freeze them (uncooked)
and a kind of stuffing made from parmesan, pancetta and sweet potato - which is bliddy lovely
and the red gabbage - which i think tastes better once it has been frozen
funny how some things are old family traditions - the red gabbage is cooked exactly as my mum would have and her mum too and i suspect is what minky will be having with his dinner
the sweet potato was another sainsburys magazine find but we have had it for the last 10 years now
I have a Nigella chocolate fruit cake recipe - I made some a couple of weeks ago. They're delicious and sticky and all round delicious
I usually make up a batch as mini muffins - perfect bite size little mouthfuls to give to visitors.
If anyone wants a recipe, let me know.