December 2010, Issue 11
Foods In Miniature
Page 69
Run, Run, fast as you can
The edible version of the Yule Log is made of a chocolate sponge roll filled with cream. The outside is covered with chocolate or chocolate icing and decorated to look like a bark-covered log. All manner of extra decorations such as marzipan mushrooms, dormice and snowmen can be added, once more the only limit is the imagination!
Any Christmas meal in Britain just wouldn't be the same without the Christmas pudding, the traditional end to any self-respecting British Christmas Dinner. The puddings we have now are nothing like the first Christmas pudding recipes dating back to the Middle Ages. Then they were known as mince pie and contained chopped poultry, pheasant, rabbit and partridge (possibly there was gingerbread in there too - to hide the smell of decaying meat!).
Years later sugar, apples, raisins and candied oranges and lemons were added to the mixture and it became known as Plum Pudding. In 1714 King George I, having eaten and enjoyed the Plum Pudding so much, decreed that this pudding always should be eaten at Christmas time!
As with so many traditional foods there are traditions and superstitions attached to the Christmas pudding. One superstition says that the pudding should be made with 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and His Disciples and that
ABOVE RIGHT, Cookies for Santa by Mary Pat Bonafice
LEFT, Christmas pudding by Amanda Speakman
BOTTOM RIGHT, Gingerbread house by Julie Davis
every member of the family should take turns to stirring it with a wooden spoon from east to west, in honour of the Wise Men. Sadly these days it seems that most people buy their puddings ready-made and these traditions are dying out and the lore lost.
Custom Dolls, Houses & Miniatures / CDHM