As always after Christmas, I’m sharing my menu for Christmas. Also, like always, we’ve had the food over two days, as we don’t overeat just because we have the food in the fridge. Or, maybe I should say, we try not to overeat.

First of all, the starters. The most important thing was cheese. In the last years we’ve had a lot of cheese, so I’ve decided to make less starters. Because my husband loves these, I’ve made aubergine salad (or dip) and deviled eggs. Besides this, we had houmous with specialty olives. On the 25th I forgot about them, but yesterday we’ve had roasted kalette too.
As for the “meat”, my husband though it would be nice to have some fake meats. It was a first, but we both love the Tofurky sausages. Besides the sausages we had Quorn bratwursts, and two types of cold meat-free-meats, one from Quorn and the other from Tofurky.

As a main I thought of a vegetarian pie. I’ve made it with chesnuts, lots of mushrooms, and butterbeans. I’m going to make it again and weight in the ingredients because it was so good. I served it with herbs mash potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and two types of pickles. My husband likes pickled cabbage, but I always want to try something new, so I’ve had pickled okra. It was fantastic, that’s something I’m going to buy again.

And, finally, the desserts. As you can see, these play a very important role in our Christmas menu. The fruit cake was delicious and I’m going to share the recipe for it. I’ve made a few alterations to the recipe I’m usually make and it turned out even better.

Mince pies, very similar to ones I’ve made before, with cranberries and apples.

This selection of biscuits and desserts is something special. During December I’ve made these and put a few in the freezer for Christmas. On the day, I took out a few of each and let it defrost on the table. I still have plenty in the freezer for these days. Of course, one of the fab things about this is that I didn’t have to make loads in the run up to Christmas. On the plate you can see, from top left: Armenian Shakarshee, Salami Biscuit, Macarons, Arabian Chaclama , and Tunisian Kaak Warka.

This is a Romanian recipe, called Cozonac. I’ve made two, one with the cocoa dough on the outside, filled with pecans and pomegranate Turkish delight, and the other one with the white dough on the outside, filled with walnuts and rose and lemon flavoured Turkish delight.

I love spending time decorating and my husband joined me again, so we’ve put our creativity to the test, decorating these ginger biscuits.

Lastly, the crowning glory: the Christmas pudding. This is shop-bought because I like the ones that are matured, but in June, when this one was made, I didn’t think starting of Christmas puddings, I was more into smoothies and healthy food. So, each year we buy a matured pudding. This one was so good that my husband commented on it a couple of times and he doesn’t even like raisins.

Did you celebrate Christmas? What did you have?