Quintessence of Christmas Baking

Most festivals around the world have dedicated foods - easter eggs, Eid sweets or mutton, Holi sweets and Diwali specialities.

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Christmas too has its various savoury food items around the world ranging from turkey to pork but nothing defines Christmas more than the sweet goodies that are baked at this time. Not just different shapes of cookies but those delicious sweet delicacies that are sinfully rich and absolutely yummy.

Christmas Cakes

It is a type of a fruitcake popular in the UK, Japan, Philippines and many other commonwealth countries - a legacy of the British. It may be dark or light and may differ from crumbly moist to sticky. It could be spongy or heavy, leavened or unleavened, and as for shape it could be square, round or any other.

The Scottish Christmas cake is made with Scotch whisky and has only currants, raisins, sultanas and cherries (with no dry fruits). Diagonally to this is the rich apple crème cake that is a mix of finely sliced apples, raisins and other fruit with eggs, cream cheese and heavy whipping cream.

In Japan Christmas cake is simply a sponge cake frosted with shipped cream, often decorated with strawberries and usually topped with Christmas chocolates or other seasonal fruit. In Philippines it is bright rich yellow pound cakes with macerated nuts or fruitcakes of the British fashion. They are soaked in copious amounts of brandy or rum mixed with a simple syrup of palm sugar and water.

Traditionally the flavouring used to be civet or ambergris but now rosewater or orange flower water is common as civet and ambergris have become very expensive. The shelf life of these liquor laden cakes can be long if they are handled properly.