Festive food part 2

Food forms many of the Traditions of Christmas. Our Christmas pudding is made in November as part of 'stir up sunday' with all my family and we all make wishes as we add a silver coin to the rich fruity mixture. Although there are no pictures it was a really yummy pud this year! Although I love dried fruit I don't actually like mince pies (though I did have one this year made by K back in November which I really enjoyed but didn't get round to trying out the recipe) I did however make a Christmas Cake. This was a Hot Toddy fruitcake and the recipe can be found here. A bit lighter than a traditional Christmas cake but really moist and tasty. I had a problem with the ready rolled icing which cracked and split so I had to disguise it with icing sugar! I didn't actually finish decorating it until Boxing Day and it was finally cut into on Monday! Our friends loved the cake last year, and were keen to have some again, G said of his piece 'this wedge is ledge'!I enjoy making puddings and some are regularly requested, the first is 'Dougal', a recipe I believe was created by my Nan. She was an amazing cook, we always had Christmas Dinner with her and all our cousins and she was so capable of preparing fantastic meals for large numbers of people. Dougal reminds me of her and is the taste of my childhood!

Do you remember eating Dream Topping? Well all you need is 2 packs of Dream Topping, a packet of ginger nut biscuits and some sweets to decorate easy! Make up one packet of Dream Topping as per recipe then use it to sandwich all the biscuits together.

Any excess can be place on the outside of the long sandwich of biscuits, then wrap the whole lot in silver foil or clingfilm. Leave overnight in the fridge.

The next day make up the second packet as per instructions, take the Dougal out the fridge and place on serving dish, cover in the Dream Topping. I have covered the dish in icing sugar to hide the non Christmassy design and to make it more Festive!

Then Molly got some small sweets and just scattered them all over! Normally we take our time and design a face/ears/legs/tail etc etc and DOUGAL is born!

There are rarely any left overs of this pudding and it is menat to be for the children but all the adults always want it as well, although they had Andrew's speciality pud which is Tiramisu!

The other easy pud I regularly make is Key Lime Pie. I use ginger snap biscuits crushed and added to melted butter to form the base in a springform tin. Whilst thie is 'setting' in the fridge I mix the zest of 2 limes with the juice of 4 limes, 300 mls of double cream and a tin of condensed milk. Mix together well, pour/spread over the biscuit base and return to the fridge for a minimum of an hour before eating. Easy peasy and very refreshing after a heavy meal.

We had a very traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings on Christmas Day (cooked by Hubby and it was fantastic). Then on Boxing Day I cooked for 14, we had mash, sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, peas, roasted butternut squash, parnip and celeriac with cold turkey and hot stuffing, sausages and my home baked ham! Every year I lose my recipe for baked/glazed ham, this year I found one involving oranges and it was divine. this is it pre baking, looks good enough to eat!

We have all eaten so well with all this home cooked goodness, plus all the choccies, cookies and other sweet treats. I have forsaken 5 a day and we have become a little bit slap dash about eating at set times! I think this does no harm once a year and I have warned the children that we will be back to regular meal times and more healthy food next week when life returns to normal in the sad post Chrimbo days! I am still hanging onto my Festive spirit for now tho!