Favourite Christmas Recipes (including the cake)

[NigelSlatersXmasTaters]

It'll soon be time to dust off the cookbooks and I'm also considering doing 2 different cakes!

I need a boozy one for me and a booze free for the kids.

What are your favourite festive recipes?

Mary Berry's Scarlet Confit is lovely (it's a very nice cranberry sauce, and freezes really well too, so you can make it as soon as you see fresh cranberries in the shops).

(Link. It's to the Daily Mail if that bothers you, but I couldn't find another one.)

In fact, her whole Christmas cook book is very good.

Those carrots sound lovely Gaspode, I'll definitely give that a go.

I swear by this marie rose sauce, its Jamie Oliver and honestly the easiest and nicest ive eaten!! I normally triple quantities as i feed so many.

MARIE ROSE SAUCE
½ a lemon
1 swig of brandy
1 pinch of cayenne pepper
1 heaped teaspooon ketchup
4 tablespoons free-range mayonnaise

Like the sound of those chantenay carrots @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g.

And that Marie Rose sauce @Starlight86

I love Annie bell's Christmas recipes. She has a fab Christmas book but found a few online which I want to eat now!

www.you.co.uk/easy-christmas-baking-recipes/

All the recipes I use I've been using for the last 10 to 20 years. I do a Mary Berry Christmas cake from an old cookbook. Delia's Christmas pudding and mincemeat. I do a mix of Delia's mince pies and frangipan topped ones that are sweeter. I use an old good housekeeping recipe for ginger soy maple roast ham and a family recipe for chestnut stuffing. We have the last few years added peppernuts and some almond biscuits alongside some gingerbread style biscuits. All Scandinavian recipes. There are so many more I want to try but we can only eat so much

@Peridot1 dont leave out the brandy!! for some reason it literally makes it, i feel like a right good chef when i make it and it tastes amazing lol

I adore Nigellas sticky gingerbread. Only DD and I like it at home but it freezes well. We manage to eat the whole lot though. mostly when its warm from the oven.

I made a load of Delia's red cabbage and apple last weekend - we ate some with a ham on Sunday, but I've got 3 x 4 servings frozen now, ready for Christmas. Great with cold turkey and ham on St Stephen's Day.

I'll also be making cheese gougeres throughout the holiday period - they vanish as soon as they're made, so it's an ongoing process!

Paul Hollywood's Black Forest trifle

I use Jamie Martin’s Christmas Cake every year - amazing.

*recipe, that should say 😂

• James Martin ffs 🤦🏽‍♀️

People who have made the creole Christmas cake, do you feed it? It wasn't clear on the recipe I looked at online! And when will you make it?

I made a cake for the first time using a friends recipe last year and it was quite dry so I think I'll give delia a whirl this year.

[quote Starlight86]@Peridot1 dont leave out the brandy!! for some reason it literally makes it, i feel like a right good chef when i make it and it tastes amazing lol[/quote]
Will remember that. Will have to hide the brandy as DH has a habit of drinking it all!

mistermagpie

Not wanting to give wrong info about feeding creole cakes so I had a look at Delia online where you can also find recipe

www.deliaonline.com/ask-lindsey/feeding-creole-cake

The short answer is yes

I alternate between Delia's classic cake and the Creole one. I tried Nigella's one year and everyone preferred Delia's. I make a stollen most years, I alternate between Delia and Hairy Bikers. The first year I had my mixer with dough hooks it was enormous (adapted hairy bikers) and I burnt my hand with molten marzipan.😄

goose how do the classic and creole cakes compare? Which one do you prefer.

Important issues we are discussing on this board

Is this weekend too early to make Christmas cake? I've never made one before but have wanted to do one this year and happen to have a quiet weekend coming up so I thought it would be nice to do with the DC.

Perfect weekend for Christmas cake because it will give you lots of time to feed it

I made the Delia Smith creole Christmas cake once and it was good. I make the rum cake (recipe given above) in preference because I think it's even better. Rum/creole cake is extremely moist, almost puddingy (well, it is the way I make it). I like traditional fruit cake too. Nobody here is all that keen on icing and marzipan so we eat the rum cake with no icing or decoration at all. Not sure it would work on a rum cake anyway, but the Delia suggestion of glazed fruits/nuts would be OK.

Place marking for ideas. I currently CBA to think about it right now. I normally do Nigellas gluten free chocolate brownies. I’m not keen on Christmas cake and if I make one then DH will scoff the lot, he’s currently trying to lose weight, so why would sabotage him with home made Christmas cake, pudding and mince pies?

No one (other than me) like Brussels in my family, yet I manage to get them eating them on Xmas day.
I shred the Brussel, and chop bacon into small squares. Some garlic butter in a frying pan with a bit of salt an pepper. Fry the brussel's and bacon until Brussels have softened, spoon onto plates

I did a baked trifle one year, similar to thiswww.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/baked-raspberry-bramble-trifle-drambuie?amp= It made a nice change from the ususalones.

@Haiyaa

Can’t beat Nigella’s Time Honoured Christmas Cake.

I also brine my turkey every year, usually with a Heston recipe for the base and add a few aromatics. Juicy and delicious every time.

For tea/Boxing Day I love Paul Hollywood’s Chicken, Bacon and Apricot hand raised pie.

Add soy sauce to your brine. Amazing.