If you want to decrease the cost of Christmas, while improving the quality of the food you eat, then start here. Here is a list of some of the best Christmas recipes on this site, they have been well received and are all family recipes that are tried and tested through the generations.  If you use and enjoy them please tell Jonathan how you got on.

TUNIS CAKE RECIPE

CHRISTMAS PUDDING RECIPE

MINCE PIES (MiNCEMEAT RECIPE)

MARZIPAN RECIPE

PEPPERMINT CREAMS RECIPE

CANDIED PEEL RECIPE

CHRISTMAS CAKE RECIPE

TURKEY STUFFING RECIPE

Related posts:

1. What are you spending on Christmas
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Whether in the UK or the US interest rates have come down and not really been handed on. I have a mortgage in its 2nd year of a 5 year fixed rate and its still offering a better deal that most mortgage companies are right now with the rate in the UK at 2%.

So what are you spending this Christmas,are you keeping the purse strings tight, cutting up the credit card and putting coal in the childrens stockings? Are you buying Christmas Pudding and mice pies? Are you having some turkey twizzlers instead of the bird with all it strimmings. OR are you saying what the hell, its a time of goodwill and plenty, of the world turned upside down, so lets splsh out one more time before we all feel like an extra in the BBCs new production of the 1970s series “survivors”.

We have for so long found it hard to reign in and take stock to understand that money is not infinte….hang on I am sounding like a politician now. The Rich don’t seem to be reigning it in,

the bankers still seem to be getting their bonus, so why is it always the people at the lower end of the economic spectrum that have to suffer. ITs what Dickens was writing about in a Christmas Carol.

“A Christmas Carol (Wordsworth Children’s Classics) (Wordsworth Children’s Classics)” (Charles Dickens)

“The Muppet Christmas Carol” (Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation, Paul Williams)

So I say make sure you have a great Christmas and by all means use some of the fantastic family recipes I have put on this site to put a bit of spice and sparkle back into Christmas

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The pressures on making Christmas into “this wonderful life” and living up to all the songs from “a child is born” to “white christmas” is immense. The presents, the food and more is all stress on the wallet and bank balance.

For us this often means someone gets ill, in our case our new daughter was trying out the nursery where there had been a couple of cases of diarhoea and vomiting. So a day or so later the weekend before christmas she started being sick, by Christmas Eve I was also vomiting quite violently and on Christmas day we managed to get the presents open but then in it all went pear shaped. Our daugher vomited bacame inconsolable and in the end we too her to the community hospital (more for our reassurance than hers). My older children were stoical but the meal and the rest of the festivities were ruined.

Lets hope boxing day can be better, as we are all feeling alot better and are off to a local grudge football match.

Dont let the pressures of Christmas get you down, we had such high hopes for babies first christmas but she had other ideas, presents and food are great but its the binding of family and community that seem important to me.

And by the way if I hear another person talking about how the spirit has gone from Christmas, I will scream. The 25 th December was the birthday of the sun god Mithras, and aslo the celebration of the Roman Saturnalia. In the north of Europe, at Yule, Odin came down through the smoke hole of the houses at night (the doors were barred it was his only entrance) to bring blessings to the house, and freya wandered the twons with her decorated pine staff knocking at doors to bring fertility and plenty. In later times the Lord of Misrule and the world turned upside down became part of the winter festivities, where over eating and drinking were the order of the day. The Christian story has been a very late addition to this and the winter period has long been a festival of riotous excess.

So maybe christmas isn’t all we thought it was not all it could be. Anyone for another slice of turkey, we have alot as no one has been eating much.

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Now for the topping:
Chocolate topping: 150g dark chocolate; 40g butter; 1.5 tbsp water

with all fillings and icing I find this tool particularly useful.

and if you want it orange butter cream filling:
50g icing sugar, sifted;
25g butter, softened;
2 tsp orange juice;
yellow food colouring (or not as desired)

and marzipan

(see the marzipan recipe on this website)

Method
- Place the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and beat until pale,I do this in a Kenwood Mixer by far the best way to make a decent cake.
- Add the eggs, flour, lemon juice, lemon rind and ground almonds, mixing thoroughly.
- Place the mixture into a 8in greased and floured cake tin and bake in a preheated oven at 150oC/300oF/gas mark 2 for one hour or until springy in the middle when pressed.
- Leave on a wire rack to cool.
- To decorate the cake, wrap some greased proof paper around the sides of the cake, standing proud about 3cm of the top, securing this with a piece of string.
- Put all topping ingredients in a basin over a pan of very hot water. Leave 10 mins to melt, stir till smooth. Leave to cool.
- Pour chocolate icing over top of cake; smooth. Leave to set. Remove paper.
- There should be a good covering of chocolate on the cake.
- Once completely set,
- Marzipan fruits and leaves: form two thirds of marzipan into a selection of apples, pears, bananas, oranges and lemons. Roll oranges and lemons over a nutmeg grater. Place a clove in each fruit to resemble stalk. Us remaining marzipan to make 7 small ivy leaves and tendrils. Paint with food colourings. Leave to harden, arrange on cake.

“Christmas Cakes” (Francesca Bosca)

Technorati Tags: Christmas, food, cakes

you can I understand buy one from tescos

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“300 Ways to Make the Best Christmas Ever!: Decorations, Carols, Crafts & Recipes for Every Kind of Christmas Tradition” (Paige Gilchrist, Aaron Morgan, Leslie Dierks)

Some say It was saint Boniface that first set about the vision of the Christmas treeit appears that only the Norse people had a solid tradition of a tree in their culture and myhtology. However, they called their tree, the Ash World Tree.  I have mentioned in another article about the relationship between the decorated staff of Freya and the Christmas tree.

Why am I bringing all this up well I have just decorated my tree with my children and my partner, and it is so emotional and has such a fantastic feeling.  Now I know that some people don’t beleive in Christmas, or do but don’t enjoy it perhaps because of childhood experience or dislike of the commercialism and mass consumption.  Not me.

I love it

“Just Say No to Christmas” (Toni Scott)

Technorati Tags: Christmas

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I loved getting the bikes i had bought for my kids in the house and setting them by the chimney without waking anyone; getting my son out of my bed where he had decided to go, and back in his own bed, letting him go back to the land of nod and then getting all the presents quietly down, so the spirit of Christmas and giving could pervade the house.

The look on every ones faces, the sense when we were all sat round the table and even the end of the day when the kids were upset and had to go back to their mothers house, it all seemed part of the ups and downs of another lovely Christmas day.

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