Christmas recipes you love - add yours

Gingerbread muffins: http://viciousange.blogspot.com/2006/11/festive-food-fair-gingerbread-muffins.html

Well, when you're tucking into baba ganoush in the same way I am, you can comment on my tastebuds. Until that time, you eat your devil's knob gravy cake and I'll remain cream cheese free.

Yay. Thanks Sunset and Oriana.

Nigella's Grandmother's ginger b&b pudding (gok what has ahppened to this formatting- ive tried to paste a table, very very badly ?)

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INGREDIENTS

75g unsalted butter

75g sultanas

3 tablespoons dark rum

10 slices brown bread (I actually use warburton's cinnamon and fruit loaf instead of proper bread and I only scatter a handful of sultanas instead of 75g)

approx. 10 x 15ml tablespoons ginger conserve or marmalade (I sometimes alternate between ginger jam and morello cherry conserve

4 egg yolks

1 egg

3 tablespoons caster sugar

500ml double cream

200ml full-fat milk

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 tablespoons demerara sugar

Serving Size : Serves 6

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Grease a pudding dish with a capacity of about 1½ litres with some of the butter. Put the sultanas in a small bowl, pour the rum over, and microwave them for 1 minute, then leave them to stand. This is a good way to soak them quickly but juicily. Make sandwiches with the brown bread, butter and ginger jam (2 tablespoonfuls in each sandwich); you should have some butter left over to smear on the top later. Now cut the sandwiches in half into triangles and arrange them evenly along the middle of the pudding dish. I put one in the dish with the point of the sandwich upwards then one with flat-side uppermost, then with point-side uppermost and so on, then squeeze a sandwich-triangle down each side – but you do as you please. Sprinkle over the sultanas and unabsorbed rum that remains in the bowl. Whisk the egg yolks and egg together with the caster sugar, and pour in the cream and milk. Pour this over the triangles of bread and leave them to soak up the liquid for about 10 minutes, by which time the pudding is ready to go into the oven. Smear the bread crusts that are poking out of the custard with the soft butter, mix the ground ginger and demerara sugar together and sprinkle this mixture on your buttered crusts and then lightly over the rest of the pudding. Sit the pudding dish on a baking sheet and put it in the oven to cook for about 45 minutes or until the custard has set and puffed up slightly. Remove, let sit for 10 minutes – and spoon out into bowls, putting a jug of custard, should you so wish, on the table to be served alongside

We were living in Somerset when mum compiled the book (it was a charity thing for our parish church), but we're not really from there iyswim ? It could have been a local thing. I'll ask her

I think I might have had some of that at a fab party at the weekend? It was very very tasty!

I'm going to be making the Hairy Bakers Cheese Straws and their Butternut Squash and Chestnut Soup on Christmas Eve followed by a roast chicken with Nigella's christmas coleslaw I've made Nigella's Beetroot and Ginger Chutney and her Chilli Jelly - the jelly is lovely I'll also be doing Ham in Coke which is a favourite here I'm hungry now!

Cherry tomatoes wrapped in bacon, then roasted Mmmmm?