Holiday Recipes

Easy Christmas Recipes Article

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Easy Christmas Recipes

from: Karlie Bestler

Around the world people have gathered together at Christmas time for centuries. Families often prepare the holiday food together or each family brings a dish rather than having one person stuck with all the work of preparing Christmas food.

There is a wide variety of traditional Christmas dishes and a lot of easy Christmas recipes. Nowadays the Christmas meal in England centers around turkey, but it used to be centered around goose. In Germany people like suckling pig.

In most American homes Christmas dinner has traditionally been turkey and all the trimmings. Americans love a good gravy with their Christmas turkey. The gravy uses the juices from the turkey along with a mixture of herbs such as marjoram, sage, thyme, rosemary and paprika. These are put in a pan along with diced onion and brought to a low boil. The gravy is then thickened and served as a side dish to the turkey.

There are some really easy Christmas recipes that have been around a long time and that have a special meaning. One of these easy Christmas recipes is mince pies, which are made with pastry filled with a mixture of chopped dried fruits and spices in a rich thick sauce. Mince pies were not always this way. They used to made from actual meat and spices and were meant to symbolize the gifts that the wise men brought Jesus. These were not the same as the easy Christmas recipes of today. They were a main course, and the pastry was shaped like a manger with the image of Jesus on top. In England the Puritans saw them as sacrilegious, but the New England Puritans liked them and continued eating them as a pie.

There are easy Christmas recipes for cakes and puddings across the world. English Christmas puddings are more like American Christmas cakes. They are just moister and have more brandy in them. The Christmas song about figgy pudding is actually a rich fruit cake.

In Italy there are easy Christmas recipes for bread. One of these is made with lemon and raisins and is called Panettone.

Easy Christmas recipes for gingerbread originated in Germany but are now very popular all over North America. Gingerbread is made into gingerbread men, and at Christmas time it can be seen in all sorts of guises and constructions.

Americans love cookies and have some easy Christmas recipes for them. The cookies are shaped into Christmas symbols like angels and stars and then baked. Families then decorate them with icing and sprinkles and pieces of candy. Making Christmas cookies is a very popular tradition in American homes.