On Christmas Day in England traditionally you eat Christmas pudding and at tea time Christmas cake. These are hot and cold versions of flour mixture made dark with brown sugar with the addition of dried fruits and often candied peel and nuts.
Plum Pudding
The Americans have plum pudding which seems the same at Christmas pudding except that you cannot sell it as a novelty and must have at . Looking at ingredients when I lived in the USA I saw no plums. Like British mince pies, short for mincemeat pies, which contain no meat nowadays.
Christmas puddings look like they date back to earlier ages, before the rise of tinned fruit and frozen fruit. Then sugar and dried fruits and nuts were luxuries special occasions and dried fruits more available than fresh fruit.
Christmas Pudding
Christmas pudding is served hot, usually with yellow custard, possibly with the addition of alcoholic sauce such as brandy. A sprig of holly on top is optional decoration, usually for magazine photographs. (We have holly in our garden in the UK but I've never met anybody who wanted non-edible decorations which need washing and prick your fingers.)
Panettone
When Panettone first appeared in England we had the Panettone Classico, plain sweet cake with sultanas. But now we can buy chocolate chip panettone in Waitrose and Tesco. In Home Sense and La Dolce Vita I saw many more varieties. (See my previous posts on Panettone.)
Pandoro With the Star
Plum Pudding
The Americans have plum pudding which seems the same at Christmas pudding except that you cannot sell it as a novelty and must have at . Looking at ingredients when I lived in the USA I saw no plums. Like British mince pies, short for mincemeat pies, which contain no meat nowadays.
Christmas puddings look like they date back to earlier ages, before the rise of tinned fruit and frozen fruit. Then sugar and dried fruits and nuts were luxuries special occasions and dried fruits more available than fresh fruit.
Christmas Pudding
Christmas pudding is served hot, usually with yellow custard, possibly with the addition of alcoholic sauce such as brandy. A sprig of holly on top is optional decoration, usually for magazine photographs. (We have holly in our garden in the UK but I've never met anybody who wanted non-edible decorations which need washing and prick your fingers.)
Panettone
When Panettone first appeared in England we had the Panettone Classico, plain sweet cake with sultanas. But now we can buy chocolate chip panettone in Waitrose and Tesco. In Home Sense and La Dolce Vita I saw many more varieties. (See my previous posts on Panettone.)
Pandoro With the Star
Italian pandoro from Sainsbury's. Somebody took this to a Christmas party for Toastmasters International speakers' club Harrovians. Nobody knew how to open the box. We eventually decided to cut the top rather than the bottom of the box, so that leftovers could be taken home on the box. As the cake is wider underneath, removing the cake through the narrower top opening was a challenge. However, we squeezed it and pulled and squashed it a bit. Finally we succeeded in extracting it through the top of the box.
After a few minutes we recalled that pandora means golden (colour) cake, because of the yellow colour. (Reminiscent of the three kings (or wide men) who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, according to the story of the Maji in Mathew (I remember M M for Maji and Mathew) in The New Testament.
I saved the box, which came from Sainsbury's. Only after I got home did I see the way you are supposed to cut the cake. I also discovered a sachet of icing sugar at the bottom of the box. I must admit we had all hacked away at the top of the cake. It had seemed a bit dry, compared to the home made tiramisu. But the first time I tried panettone I thought it was dry and tasteless. Three years later, it is a favourite, eaten every day in December with coffee for elevenses, or at tea time.
I think back to my childhood and teenage years before the year 2000. Then Christmas pudding and Christmas cake were the only novelty foods which I saw for dessert and tea time at Christmas in England. Now panettone is in every shop - I have seen them in: Home Sense, Morrisons, Tesco, Waitrose.
I wonder whether pandoro will be the next big thing next year, December and Christmas 2016. At least, next time, I shall know that you are supposed to slice the cake horizontally, use the template on top to cut out the five point star, and scatter icing through the star shape hole to make a five point star pattern in icing on the top.
Do you know how to get the cake out of the tapered box? Do you know how to turn the cake into a star shape and get the white star on top? Follow the teeny scissors symbols on the box. Now I look at the box again, I see a five point star, which is the traditional depiction of the star over Behtlehem, where Jesus was born and where the Maji went to visit. But the six point star on the box also suits the festival of Hanukah (whose real symbol is the nine branch hanukkah). So next year the star shape cake can be adapted to suit anybody and everybody.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Author, researcher, speaker.
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