Christmas parties in England are accompanied with foods such as mince pies, satsumas, sausage rolls, mulled wine and boxes of quality street. Mince pies are certainly the most ubiquitous pre-christmas food, either shop bought of home-made in all sorts of sizes and varieties, and it seems hard to go anywhere in December without being offered one. After Christmas it is hard to escape from leftover christmas cake with royal icing that gets harder and harder as the days go by, but I love marzipan so in general I don’t mind.
In the states Christmas festivities are more about cookies, with cookie exchanges, cookies as gifts and a huge array of different cookies. At parties these may be washed down with egg-nog. I don’t really remember cookies (biscuits) being a big part of christmas in England, except maybe for gingerbread houses and christmas shapes, but I don’t know if we just had them because my mother is American. I know cookies are an important part of christmas celebrations in Germany for their advent celebrations.
I went to a cookie decorating event on Sunday at the Wild Goose Creative, one of their monthly food events. We decorated sugar cookies, drank tea and hot chocolate and admired each others designs. As well as icing there was a wealth of different sprinkles and a lot of ‘please can you pass’….
The Ohio shaped cookie cutter was popular and offered a lot of potential for interesting designs. Mine was a winter wonderland, given the snow outside. I admit the snowman has crazy eyes and is a little zombie-esque.
Our finished cookies. There were a lot of comments about why my gingerbread man looks so sad but I think anyone would look unhappy if they knew their head was about to be bitten off. The event was a lot of fun and a nice way to meet some new people , get in touch with your creative side and get into the holiday spirit.
What are your favorite christmas cookies? Are there other foods that you associate with christmas parties?
