Christmas with Irena

By Irena Chalmers

Let Irena help you plan the sweets you serve and those you give away this holiday season. From muffins and pies to cakes and cookies Christmas with Irena: Confectionary Classics is your one stop guide to all of your holiday baking essentials.

As the recipient of 12 Tastemaker awards and author of various cookbooks of all courses and cuisines, Irena Chalmers' recipes make perfect additions to all of your holiday traditions. Christmas with Irena presents short, simple, and easy-to-read recipes that look and taste irresistibly delicious. While these recipes are suitable for beginners, more accomplished bakers may find Irena's approach refreshing and practical, too. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beaufort Books
• Release date: Dec 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9780825307096

Irena Chalmers

IRENA CHALMERS established her own cooking school in Greensboro, North Carolina after studying at the Cordon Bleu School of Cooking in Paris. She has appeared on numerous television programs and has given lectures and cooking demonstrations around the country. Chalmers has written more than eighty specialty cookbooks that are sold both here and abroad, including The Confident Cook and The Great Food Almanac.

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Introduction

Seasonings Greetings! The holidays are upon us, and Santa will, once again, arrive in the nick of time, strengthening the old links that bind our memories as we forge new ones. Many of us have real or imagined rememberances of skating on the just-frozen ponds and retreating to crackling fireplaces with sweet hot chocolate, spiced cider, or mulled wine.

While childhood memories often determine whether our holiday feast includes Swedish gravlax, Norwegian baked cod, Mediterranean roast goat, or stuffed whale skin (if Greenland is your home), there is always room to add new treats to your holiday festivities. So many families now are celebrating the season with various types of restaurant cuisines, which may give them a taste of the holidays from another country’s perspective. How grand it would be then, to do an informal potluck consisting of the traditional foods from countries like Spain, Holland, Greece, and even Turkey. A ‘round the world’ tasting of Feliz Navidad, Hyvaa joulua, God jul, Jutdlime pivdluarit ukiortarme pivdluaritlo or Sretan Božić would make for an unforgettable holiday season as our families symbolically hold hands from generation to generation, and across many nations. So today I share some classic recipes from my home country that will make delicious additions to any holiday menu. For we all know it is the sweet treats we look forward to most of all.

Fruit Desserts

Christmas Pudding for the Royal Family

Queen Victoria was the monarch who introduced the idea of burying silver trinkets in the Christmas pudding—an early British version of the fortune cookie perhaps? A new recipe for plum pudding was created to celebrate the Queen’s 50th year on the throne. It consisted of fifty sweet almonds, equal to each year of Her Majesty’s reign; five ounces of bread crumbs, representing Her daughters; four ounces of flour, numbering Her sons; three ounces of coconut, cut into thirty-two pieces, to represent Her grandchildren; five ounces of suet, chopped into as many peices as Her Majesty has subjects in every town; and five eggs, well beaten, representing England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the Colonies. To reproduce the Queen’s cake, mix the ingredients together with half a pint (4,980 drops) of milk— representing the ages in months of Her Majesty and her children; and water that has been boilded for two hours and sixteen minutes—the age of Her Majesty in Her Golden Jubilee Year. The current Queen’s Christmas Pudding, borne blue and blazing with brandy" by the Queen’s Page to the dining table at Windsor Castle, will be made this year as is customary from a seventeenth-century recipe. Serves 20-28

• 1¼ pounds suet

• 1 pound demerara (light brown) sugar

• 1 pound raisins

• 1 pound currants

• 4 ounces citron peel, chopped

• 1 teaspoon mixed spices

• 1½ teaspoon nutmeg

• 1 pound breadcrumbs

• ½ pounds sifted flour

• 1 pound eggs (weighed in their shells)

• 1 wine