Retro Christmas Food

[allyouneedisloveand]

I went to M&S earlier and picked up a pack of mushroom vol au vents . They do reminded me of Christmas parties from my childhood.
I thought it would be fun to do a retro Christmas buffet this year . What things do you remember having for n Christmas buffets as a child ?

Tunis cake

Like a festive cottage pie? It sounds lovely!

Gala pie
Sardines (tinned) on fingers of toast
Cheese footballs
Salted peanuts (must be KP)
Cheese and pineapple or cheese and tiny silver skin onions
Sausage rolls
Smoked sausage - usually in a ring shape, which was sliced and had a cocktail stick stuck in each piece
Cocktail sausages
Cheese straws
Cheeseboard consisting of Cheddar, Edam, Danish Blue and Brie for the very daring
Laughing Cow Apéricubes
Pickled herring, cut into pieces with a cocktail stick in it
Little bowls of pickles - baby beetroot, tiny sour gherkins, pickled onions
Celery with Primula squirted down the middle

My Mum used to make a dessert that the kids loved, which was tinned pineapple and tinned mandarin oranges, chopped small and mixed with marshmallows and sour cream.

Boxes of Meltis New Berry Fruits!

As a child I couldn't keep my hands off those orange and lemon slices.

Neopolitan chocolates, little rectangles of loveliness.

I've just emptied the shelves of cheese footballs in Sainsbury's. Nobody else in the house likes them (rubs hands in anticipatory glee).

Mushroom vol au vents and the sauce was undiluted Campbells cream of mushroom soup.

My Mum also had a square egg press, so lots of square hard boiled eggs cut in half with a blob of salad cream on the yolk.

Watneys Party Seven
Babycham
Snowball
Cinzano and lemonade
Gin and It (Italian Vermouth)
Whisky and ginger
Cherry brandy
Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry
Blue Nun or Black Tower Liebfraumilch.

Mushroom vol au vents - oh yes, with tinned creamed mushrooms
hard-boiled eggs with the yolks removed, mashed with salad cream and then spooned back in
Ritz crackers with primula cheese spread
stuffed olives from a tin

This was always the Boxing Day buffet in the evening, there were probably chocolate fingers as well and some other stuff.

My mum was a fabulous cook but I suppose this saved her spending hours in the kitchen, it always felt very exciting and sophisticated.

Although my mother drank whisky, my father thought that the only suitable drinks for women were ‘snowballs’ - advocaat and lemonade, or Martini and lemonade so my older sisters and sisters-in-law had to put up with this.

This really takes me back!

Twiglets!

Every year I tell myself I won't eat the cheese footballs, because they are sickly and greasy and will make me feel like crap. And every year there comes an evening when I just try one...then I've suddenly eaten the whole tub, and I feel like sickly, greasy crap 😂

I remember my granny making "stuffed dates" in the 1960s using a box of those sticky "Eat Me" dates - you put a slit in the top and fished out the stone, and then filled them with marzipan

Snowball
Babycham
After eights
Huge tin of Roses
Vienetta if we were feeling posh / kwik save black forest gateau otherwise😬.
The best thing about retro Christmas food was.... just that......it was, 'For Christmas ' end of 🤣🎄🎄🎄

Pekkala Tesco have reintroduced Tunis Cake ... I bought one for my 90 year old mum the other day .... it wasn't nearly as nice as we remembered.

The gross cheesy footballs.
The gross pretzel stick thingies.
Cherries soaked in brandy and dipped in chocolate, left to harden, stuck on a cocktail stick.
Crystallised ginger.
Chocolate covered Brazil nuts.
Mint imperials.
Marzipan sweets that looked like fruit.

Tunis cake.

Sainsburys do one that is close to the original. I hope they don't stop, if they do I will have to make one.

Oh yes! My mum used to make the fruit flans. She bought something called Quick Jel and poured it on the top of the fruit. It came as a powder in little sachets and, when mixed with water, you got a bright red sticky gloop to pour on your flan. We always ate them with evaporated milk.

We also had a weird trifle with Swiss roll slices as the base, then raspberries, then raspberry jelly, followed by pink blancmange and topped off with Birds Dream Topping and hundreds and thousands.

Tunis cake
Newberry fruits
Black magic

Del Monte fruit cocktail served with Carnation milk.
Finger roll open sandwiches egg and cress, and salmon and cucumber.
Tomato halves cut in a zig zag
Cucumber and sliced onions in vinegar.

Brandy snaps filled with squirty cream! I still have them now, delicious (and messy).

Orange and lemon slices.

Ginger wine.

Retro fantastic.

Prawn and egg vol au vents are a fave in this house, I do them every year on New Year’s Eve and Boxing Day,
we always have cheese and pineapple on sticks.
cocktail sausages
mini sausage rolls
all things I remember from my childhood

homemade peppermint ice sweets.
Vol au vents with cheese sauce inside
mum's recipe chocolate biscuit cake - delish!
Cocktail onions and cheese on sticks

drinks: 'snowballs' avocat and lemonade, babysham, ginger wine and of course Baileys, hot French coffee to finish

From Boxing Day party buffets, rather than Xmas, a large glazed ham with pineapple rings pinned onto it with toothpicks

Tunis cake. I found a recipe a few years ago and make it myself. Much nicer 🙂