It’s competition time!
Would you like to be in with a chance of winning a signed copy of both of my new books Knead to Know: A History of Baking and The Philosophy of Puddings? Well here is your chance.
It is very simple to enter: All you need to do is go to the foot of this post, “like” it and leave a comment declaring your favourite Christmastime dessert.
I will select one person at random on 2 December at 7pm GMT. That’s your deadline. Good luck!
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British Food: A History 
My favourite pudding at Christmas is sherry trifle. Ideally featuring cranberry jelly, panettone and Pedro Ximenez for maximum Christmassyness.
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my favourite has to be traditional Christmas pud. Especially lovely fried in butter for breakfast of Boxing Day!
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my favourite Christmas time pudding has to be leftover traditional Christmas pudding, fried in butter for Boxing Day breakfast. With any cream and left over brandy butter of course.
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For me it has to be a rich Christmas cake, at least an inch thick marzipan all round, icing optional, but royal if absolutely necessary 🙂
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Christmas pudding with brandy cream, please!
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My fave dessert has got to be Christmas pud with extra thick double cream. Everything else can be eaten any time of the year in my opinion but Christmas pud, especially home made, is special.
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Hard to decide between panettone bread and butter pudding with home-made marmalade, or trifle with luscious eggy vanilla-y custard. Maybe both!
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Has to be Christmas pudding
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My favorite Christmas dessert? It`s a toss-up between Christmas plum pudding with my mom`s killer hard sauce, and my great grandmother`s Linzertorte. If I´m feeling piggish, it may very well be both!
Merry Christmas!
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I have grown to love a steamed Persimmon Pudding, made with the wild Native American persimmon, Diospyros Virginiana. The fruit is increasingly difficult to gather wild as development and road improvements have removed this scrubby tree in suburban areas. The recipe I was given includes a butter-sugar sauce made with white port.
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Mine is Christmas pudding
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So many choices from my Irish/German family. I’d have to choose mincemeat tarts, but German Stollen would be a close second. Why do we only make them at Christmastime!?!
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Favorite Christmas dessert? Oh, gosh! This year, something apple and pumpkin, maybe a pie. Last year it was a cake. And always, my friend Mimi’s grandmother’s fruit cake.
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Favorite Christmas dessert? Oh, gosh! Last year it was pumpkin apple pie, this year, maybe pumpkin apple cake. And always, friend Mimi’s grandmother’s fruitcake!
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l do love Christmas pudding but most of my French family don’t so l have been making a Christmas Pavlova for the past couple of years with a chocolate meringue, chestnut and clémentines on cream with passion fruit running through it and decorated with pomegranate seeds and rosemary. On a good year it looks like a Christmas wreath.
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I will go with mince pie!
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Christmas pudding, no contest
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My favourite is Christmas Pudding, but fried with rashers and egg on St Stephen’s Day for breakfast.
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My favourite is Christmas Pudding fried with rashers and egg on St Stephen’s Day for breakfast.
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Spicy Ginger Cake! with a side of mini mince pies 🙂
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Bearing in mind I’m from Australia, the idea of a hot Christmas dessert is SCARY. Our Christmas is invariably really hot, and where I live, very humid. So cold desserts are preferred. My favourite is a Summer Berry Pudding, served with home made vanilla ice cream.
This year I’m going go be experimenting though, and I’m developing a Lemon and Basil Cassata Cake.
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Trifle, obviously. I made mine with proper savoiardi biscuits, then either cherries (frozen so they defrost with purple juices on to the biscuits) or poached pear slices (those work really well for a winter trifle) and most of their poaching liquid, then homemade very vanilla-y custard, and then cream whipped with a little sugar and either more vanilla or a little cinnamon. And then dusted with chocolate shards or cinnamon. (And now it seems far too long since I’m made one of my Special Christmas Trifles.
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We’ve got a family tradition of having gooseberry fool – made from a reserved bag of last summer’s frozen gooseberries – as an alternative, particularly for anyone who doesn’t like Christmas pudding.
I can usually find rom for a bit of both!
You could make it with bottled gooseberries, but I reckon you’d have to add some gelatine to make it set.
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It has to be Lemon Crunchy Flan! A ginger biscuit base with cream cheese/cream/lemon topping. Super easy, and just what’s needed to finish off dinner, the lemon adding a much needed refresher! It’s a family heirloom straight out of a 1980s supermarket cook book!
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Hello there Zoe Slade!
You have won the competition – CONGRATULATIONS. Please reply to this comment so that I know you have seen it! Drop me a line at neil@britishfoodhistory.com and send me your address. I’ll get them sent over to you.
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Got to be the Yule log. Decadent and beautiful, I love adding marzipan mushrooms and leaves 🍄🟫
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Amaretto trifle
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Without a doubt, my Mum’s homemade Christmas pudding! The smell of Christmas in a pudding.
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For me it has to be my Mum’s homemade Christmas pudding! The smell is just incredible and well it tastes utterly delicious.
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Traditional Christmas pudding with brandy butter and clotted cream 😋
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My favorite holiday dessert is cranberry steamed pudding with vanilla hard sauce. I first tasted it at my mother-in-law’s Thanksgiving table over 45 years ago. I think of her every time I make it. She was a wonderful woman and a great cook.
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Mince pies are my favourite!
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I love a mince pie BUT with a large chunk of Stilton just under the lid. Dessert? Unsure, I think it’s appropriate at any point!
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Mince pies; we always excitedly make the mincemeat in Sept, which gets the ball rolling for our Xmas party prep. We previously loosely followed Eliza Acton’s meat mince pies for a Victorian Xmas party, and they went down a treat!
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My favourite festive pudding has to be something with citrus 🍋🍊. After rich food I need something zesty, something like lemon mousse cake, st clements pavlova or even a lemon posset.
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Difficult to choose, but at least recently I’ve been nostalgically craving homemade sugar cookies with almond icing and cinnamon imperials. Also thinking of “bubble bread” which is frozen dinner rolls baked in a pan with chewy butterscotch-cinnamon-pecan topping–but my brain classes this as a breakfast rather than dessert. Haha
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Hard to choose, but I’d have to go with the Yule log/Buche de Noel. I’m a fan of anything that features chocolate!
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The Christmas pudding!
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Cherries and berries pavlova 🍒
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It has got to be mince tarts for me. But, honestly, I love it all! Haha!
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Stolen! 😍
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My favourite pudding at Christmas is Stollen & also Christmas Cake!
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My grandma’s trifle – strict Methodists, so no sherry. It was always made with tinned mandarins, orange jelly, sliced up Swiss roll and Birds custard. My kids loved it too, so I carried on making it after grandma died.
Gill
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