Your favourite Christmas recipe.

[MrsWhites]

Is it too early? I want to try a few new recipes this year so share your favourites with me please!!

I’ll start with the pie I make with Christmas leftovers:

hairybikersrecipes.co.uk/hairy-bikers-turkey-ham-pie-recipe/

Sounds amazing

This is deceptively easy and always goes down so well

https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/mary-berrys-cranachan-pavlova-wreath/

Not recipes as such, just things the family and I prefer:
Brandy butter made with salted butter.

Bread sauce made with the onion chopped and simmered in the milk until tender then blended all together. I also use allspice instead of cloves and a load of cream and butter and season it well. The basic recipe is Delia's but those modifications make something very bland that I've never liked into one of the best bits of the meal. Imo of course.

Does anyone have a recipe for a nice chocolate pudding, maybe a trifle, but not chocolate orange? I make a regular trifle but some fuss pot kids of mine turn their noses up at it, they don't like orange either. Or indeed fruit in general 😩

https://createbakemake.com/christmas-reindeer-biscuits/
https://www.recipetineats.com/special-pork-fennel-sausage-rolls/

And things to make now- to have at Christmas
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/sloe-gin
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/plum-brandy
https://www.instructables.com/Butterscotch-Vodka/

Nigella's ham in coca cola is one of the centre pieces of my Christmas lunch. Family prefer it to the turkey.

I also do Jamie Oliver's celeriac as a side.

Oooh, can you share the recipe?

Omg, these sound simply divine!
Will definitely be doing these.

I make this lighter christmas pudding, with apricots and pistachios, and a kumquat compote if I am quick enough to get some kumquats. My children when younger preferred this to a traditional pud.
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/food/recipes/a541355/the-good-housekeeping-christmas-pudding/

Mine is the pie OP! Had to check I hadn’t started this thread. We have it every year on 27th

This is my new favourite recipe 🤣

I also make Nigella's Soy and Cranberry sausages, they're a Christmas staple! https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/dec/02/nigella-lawsons-recipe-for-cranberry-and-soy-glazed-cocktail-sausages

I also make Nigella's Gingerbread Stuffing https://www.nigella.com/recipes/gingerbread-stuffing

And Jamie Oliver's Mums Trifle https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit/mrs-oliver-s-massive-retro-trifle/

Love this

@IridescentShadow here's the recipe
It's very ancient as you can see from the imperial measurements and my late mother's writing.
Hope you can make it out 😄

I’m loving this thread

Thank-you!

How much white chocolate?

Bookmarking. This is a great thread.

if you have kids around, reindeer brownies are fun.

Use any brownie recipe (or even a packet mix), bake in a round tin. Cut a few glacé cherries into quarters. When the brownies are cold, cut into 6 or 8 triangles, cover in melted chocolate, and before it sets add glacé cherry noses, chocolate-covered pretzel antlers and either bought googly eyes or make some from fondant icing.

Here’s some I made (much) earlier… (if the photo posts - it’s under review )

@IridescentShadow I'd say 200g as that's what I use on my usual traybake recipes

Champagne for breakfast. Port for lunch. Brandy for dinner. Everything else tastes marvellous!

Thank-you!

@RaraRachael what a beautiful thing to have, your Mum's recipe written in her handwriting. My Mum wasn't a cook or a baker but my late MIL was both and I have some of her handwritten amendments to recipes she liked. It is a lovely thing to have their handwriting.

@Confusedmeanderings I too made mince pies using Robertson's jar with added grated orange zest. I never pretended they were my own, I doff my cap to you that you have managed to get away with your secret for years. Do you think you will do a death bed confession to your Dh? Or will you take it to the grave?

Another Nigella recipe, but for a drink this time...
https://www.nigella.com/recipes/poinsettia
😋

There are some great recipes to try now and not wait until Christmas.
I always make a Delia Christmas cake but change the fruit for apricots, cranberries, pineapple and currants as I don’t like standard mixed fruit.

Love this thread.

Last two years I’ve made this Jamie Oliver panettone bread and butter pudding - you tear up a panettone and make it into a sort of pie tart shell, then mix chunks of the rest of it with the custard, plus marmalade and chunks of dark chocolate. It’s amazing. Perhaps one for the new year
when you find you’ve got a panettone left over.
https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chocolate/bread-butter-panettone-pudding-tart/

Also the best thing last year was Christmas ice cubes - I got a larger ice cube tray with bigger chunky square cube shapes. Then in each bit you put a couple of cranberries, a little sliced segment of orange (or clementine), and a tiny sprig of rosemary, then top it up with cranberry juice and freeze. Then add the frozen Christmassy party ice cubes to wide glasses of Prosecco etc or the kids lemonade to make Christmassy drinks with absolutely zero effort. Makes your drinks all pink and Christmassy looking. I saw it in a Facebook reel or in good housekeeping magazine or something.