Would you like a cake like dessert to finish lunch, or dinner? A surprise to make a grand end to a dinner party?
What about Christmas? In England people make Christmas cake or Christmas cake well in advance. The alcohol helps preserve it.
The French instead have buche Noel.
The Italians, Spanish and Venezuelans have Panetonne. It keeps in a tin for months.
1 Sicilian Pishacio layer cake
(muffin)
Italian. In the UK from Etna Cafe
2 Lokshen Pudding
Jewish, Ashkenazi style, from B & K
Lokshen pudding from B & K, Hatch End. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Noodles with succulent sultanas (large dried grapes from the island of that name) and lemon juice for added flavour.
3 Christmas cake or wedding cake or fruit cake with yellow marzipan and white icing. Make sure it has almonds, marzipan, not just white icing. The hard icing helps keep it moist. The marzipan adds flavour, and nutrition from the almonds.
English
Recipe from
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Christmas_Cake
4 Stollen with a Marzipan centre
German
From Marks & Spencer or Tesco and other supermarkets around Christmas holiday time
Check the picture to see the amount of almond paste in the centres.
5 Yemas de Cartagena
Spanish
Cartagena is in the Murcia region of South East Spain, up the cost from Marbella. We tried this declidious dessert in a Parador hotel, a former historic ruin reconstructed and turned into a tourism-attracting hotel as part of the nationwide network serving local food.
Yemas are eggs. We had a creamy dessert in the hotel.
There are also wonderful solid chestnut or almond bars or bite size pieces in divided chocolate boxes.
6 Apple Strudel
B & K deli take away or eat it, Hatch End or Edgware in NW London, England
Apple Strudel. Pastry folded over filling of apple chunks. Photo by Angela Lansbury
7 Baklava
With real nuts. Avoid the sort made with cheaper peanuts.
Greek and middle European and middle eastern.
8 Summer Pudding
From Waitrose.
9 Bread and Butter Pudding
Bread pudding, or bread and butter pudding. Layers of bread soaked in milk. With sultanas or raisins.
10 New York style Cheesecake
Baked. A cake. Not a mousse!
From Carnegie deli in Wikipedia.
11 Tarte Tatin
French apple torte. Also known as upside down cake. Thin pastry base and thinly sliced apples with apricot see-through glaze.
Can also be made with pears. Overlapping slices in a circle, or on a grid.
12 Mango Sticky Rice pudding
Fresh mango and sticky rice. Singapore and Asian countries. Thailand. The Philippines uses coconut and chocolate.
13 Ipswich Almond Pudding
A cold dessert. Unusual. A great cake if you can't cook or don't want to risk something going wrong, or want to prepare in advance. I found the recipe in a looseleaf file or regional UK recipes issued by the tourist board years ago. We used to make this for dinner parties when we were just married.
You use sponge fingers as the base and sides, soaking them in milk plus alcohol. Add layers of alternating double cream with ground almonds, more soaked sponge fingers, and whipped double cream. Refrigerate to help it to set and keep the cream fresh. Even better the next day when evaporation intensifies the flavour.
14 Surprise Mock Egg
From the now no longer Haro restaurant which was at Little Bedwyn. We would drive hours there and back for their expensive but exquisite meals on special occasions such as a birthday or wedding anniversary. The egg served like a boiled egg in an egg cup with a meringue outside and a mango flavoured yellow inside.
To counteract over sweetness and add crunch and sustaining cereal, a salted shortbread biscuit as a reminder of the oblong 'finger' slice of toast dipped in a boiled egg when we were children.
Photo by Angela Lansbury.
15 Chocolate Lava Cake/ Melted Chocolate Puddings/ Chocolate Fondant (Chocolate bomb)
Served at Petrus (expensive) and many other restaurants. Other versions have cold white ice cream centres for contrasting colour.
Hot outside chocolate pudding with molten chocolate or chocolate pudding centre.
French bombe glacee from Wiki.
Chocolate with ice cream centre was the dessert at the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II.
16 Welsh cakes
Best served fresh and hot with melting butter. I had them hot at tea time in the Fishguard Hotel in Wales at Writers' Holiday.
17 Meringue with fruit - Pavlova
Hard white meringue base ring with chopped or whole fresh fruit in the circular centre, such as strawberries. The national dish of Australia and New Zealand, both countries claiming it was invented there. Broken up meringue in the UK is called Eton Mess. Easier to make.
From Wiki.
18 Christmas Pudding
UK. Americans serve it all year and call it plum pudding.
Heston Blumenthal added a whole citrus fruit in the middle. This was sold through supermarkets at a premium price.
Photo by Angela Lansbury.
19 Large thin Crepes (Pancake) with Grand Marnier liqueur.
Feature of Mont St Michel in the north of France.
20 Salzburger Knockerl
A huge dish to be shared. In Austrial we had soft meringues floating in sauce. Salzburg. Vienna. The French version is Isles flottentes or floating islands.
Post draft saved to guard against loss. More text and photos being added.
For tea time in the UK we like hot crumpets with butter and jam. Some people like waffles, which come in at least two varieties, Belgian, thick, with the square or oblong holes, and American, thin, any shape, and can be served for breakfast, or Vietnamese as a snack, round thin and folded over the filling.
I haven't mentioned my former favourites which no longer have a novelty value.
1 Crème brulée or burned cream.
3 Fruit salad with caramelised ginger which we make at home.
4 Gulub Jam/Jamun. Indian. Two or three balls in syrup. Our favourite dessert in Indian restaurants (which is London are often owned by Pakistanis or people from Bangldesh who have lived in London for years.) We like it more than kulfi (Indian ice cream). We bought a packet mix from Mustaphas' store in Singapore. However, we found it hard to keep the balls from falling apart.
Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_chocolate_cake
About the Author
Angela Lansbury was born and bred in Britain, and has lived in the USA and Singapore. Her family have worked in or lived in Spain and Switzerland. She is a member of Toastmasters Clubs meeting on Zoom with visitors from the UK and USA, India, Sri Lanka, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Through the Toastmasters mentoring program Angela has connected with individuals in Vietnam and Romania, a different connection each month. Please come to the next BHA Toastmasters meeting on the 3rd Saturday afternoon every month.
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