Christmas Abroad

Wow! It's hard to believe that Christmas is here. It seems just like yesterday we arrived and now we are buying presents, putting up trees and celebrating our first Christmas overseas. It's been lots of fun learning about new traditions, although being away during the holidays definitely makes you homesick. With that being said, it's been great getting gifts and Christmas cards from the states. It makes me feel really blessed and grateful we have such wonderful friends and family. I know mailing a box or a card is not easy when the recipient is abroad but it's definately appreciated.

All in all Christmas in England is very similar to Christmas in America. Trees, gifts and garland are all pretty universal, however things tend to differ when we get to the Christmas desserts. In America, we don't really have a traditional Christmas dessert. It's cookies, cakes,candies and the all uninspiring fruit cake, but in England there are several traditional desserts. The biggest in the Christmas Pudding. It's a ball shaped dried fruit based dessert. It often takes a month to "cure" for lack of a better term and it's made of dried fruit. When being served it is doused in brandy and set ablaze. Sometime it has custard on top.

Christmas Pudding

The next big one is the Christmas Cake.  Unlike the Christmas Pudding that combines alcohol, citrus, dried fruit and spices, the Christmas Cake is basically a frosted and ornately decorated fruit cake. It's normally square and doesn't seem as laborious as the Christmas Pudding.

Christmas Cake

The final one is Mince Pies. Most mince pies today do not contain meat, although some do. The vast majority are a mini pie filled with (you guessed it) more dried fruit and spices. Someone told me at work, fruit start creeping into the pies many years ago because alot of times the meat used in mince pies was slightly bad and the fruit covered up the smell. With that being said, I also read on line that it was a combination of the sweet and savoury, so the fruit-meat combo was on purpose as opposed to necessity. Whatever the reasons, the modern Mince Pie resembles more fig preserves to me than anything else.

So, with all this being said if you like fruit cake, dried fruit, fruit and spiced based desserts you would really enjoy all three of these. I'm not a huge fan of them as I don't like raisins and they all seem to have them, but there you go. Traditional British Christmas Desserts. Merry Christmas!

Mince Pies