Christmas bakes: stirring up tradition
While roast turkey and Brussels sprouts may steal the show on the big day, no festive feast feels complete without the traditional Christmas bakes – mince pies, Christmas pudding, Christmas cake or a Yule log.
Recently, British tables have welcomed some European additions too – think stollen, gingerbread, and panettone. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, this blog’s for you!
The evolution of Christmas pudding
Christmas pudding is perhaps the most traditional of Christmas bakes, but it’s not actually baked – and wasn’t originally sweet!
What we now know as Christmas pudding began life as a savoury pottage, or broth, made with dried fruit, spices, wine, and meat. The original ‘figgy pudding’, similar to the 1392 recipe for fygey in ‘A Forme of Cury’, was served as a starter rather than a dessert.
Over centuries, the pudding became associated with Christmas – in no small part due to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Mrs Cratchit’s blazing pudding.
“In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered: flushed, but smiling proudly: with the pudding, like a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding!”
The Victorians established the tradition of making the Christmas pudding on Stir Up Sunday, the fifth Sunday before Christmas. Every family member would stir the mixture from east to west to honour the journey of the Magi. This ritual was also thought to bring the family luck in the coming year.
With 13 ingredients symbolising Jesus and the disciples, and hidden charms to predict fortune, Christmas pudding has always been rich in both flavour and folklore.
Is Christmas pudding actually good for you?
Surprisingly, yes – in moderation. Fibre-rich dried fruits offer enzymes and polyphenols (substances with a high antioxidant activity). Sultanas, currants, apricots and pears are highly nutritious and packed with essential potassium and iron. And although dried fruits can contain a lot of sugar, they have a lower glycaemic index value so don’t impact your blood sugar in the same way as other sweet treats.
The mixed spices, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves are also an incredible source of aromatic antioxidants. Spices aid digestion and have anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. They can supposedly even help to reduce bloating, cramps and nausea – key if you’ve been overdoing it a bit.
Leftover love: what to do with pudding remains
In Lancashire they make a type of Eccles cake with the crumbs and in Devon they turn the leftovers into a type of custardy pudding. Some people prefer it sliced and fried, just like the original plum porridge. Another firm favourite is Christmas pudding ice-cream – simply mix pudding with vanilla ice cream and enjoy.
Christmas cake’s wedding-day origins
Christmas pudding developed into another of our traditional Christmas bakes – Christmas cake. When families in the sixteenth century made their Christmas puddings for the big day, they would often use some of the mixture, with the addition of flour and eggs, to bake and eat for Eastertime. It was enjoyed so much that the rich fruitcake was made for Christmas too.
The marzipan and icing that now define the Christmas cake have their roots in wedding traditions. In 1769, Elizabeth Raffald published the first known recipe for an iced cake – a bride’s cake – later adapted into festive form.
Mince pies: a savoury start with a sweet ending
Mince pies may be a famous symbols of British Christmas bakes today, but their origins are far meatier and more exotic than you may realise. Their story begins in the Middle East when returning Crusaders brought back the idea of combining meat, fruit, and spice
By the Middle Ages, these ideas had made their way firmly into British cuisine. The earliest known English recipe for a spiced meat pie appears in A Forme of Cury. These versions were made with mutton, dried fruit, saffron and sugar, and designed to last through the winter, preserved by encasing them in thick pastry cases and sealing them with fat.
Over time, as the hearty pies were rectangular, people began to associate them with the manger Jesus was laid in. Soon pastry versions of the baby Jesus were placed on the lid.
The pies were made from 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and his disciples and were all symbolic to the Christmas story. As well as raisins or figs, they included mutton to represent the shepherds and spices (cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg) for the Wise Men. It was only later, post Reformation, that the mince pie adopted a round shape.
Another Middle Ages belief was that if someone ate this kind of pie every day between Christmas and Twelfth Night eve (5th January) then happiness would be bestowed on that person for the next twelve months.
Through the centuries, the pies shrank in size and meat gradually gave way to dried fruit, spices, and suet-based mincemeat. By 1740, when
cookery writer Hannah Glasse published one of the first meat-free mincemeat recipes, the sweet version dominated as sugar became cheaper and easier to get, thanks to the rise of sugarcane plantations in the West Indies.
By the time Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens started reshaping Christmas with their new traditions, the mince pies we know today were well established.
Top tip – If you have any leftover mince pies after Christmas, chop them up and fold into softened ice cream, then freeze to harden. Alternatively, turn mince pies into a tasty trifle by laying with custard and cream.
The Yule log - from firewood to French delight
Every European country has its traditional Christmas bakes, and our next star hails from the Nordic nations by way of France.
The Yule log tradition has ancient origins in Norse and Celtic solstice festivals. A large log would be burned for twelve days to symbolise the return of the sun and offer protection from evil.
The word Yule” itself comes from the Old Norse word ‘Jól,’ referring to a pagan festival celebrating the rebirth of the sun during the winter solstice. The ceremony was believed to bring good luck, prosperity, and protection to the home, driving away evil spirits during the cold winter months.
This tradition continued for centuries but began to fade when, as suggested by historians, hearths in homes became smaller, or in some cases, were replaced with iron stoves, making it impractical to burn large logs indoors.
The switch from burning logs to baking cakes occurred in the nineteenth century, when French pastry chefs took the symbolic Yule log and turned
it into the Bûche de Noël, a rolled sponge cake decorated to look like wood, complete with chocolate ganache, meringue mushrooms, and
sugar-dusted snow. The first recorded recipe appeared in a cookbook by Parisian pastry chef Pierre Lacam in 1890.
The Bûche de Noël quickly became a beloved Christmas treat across France and soon spread to other parts of Europe. Over time, bakers introduced variations, experimenting with different flavours, fillings, and decorations.
Today’s Yule logs come in many forms – chocolate, coffee, fruit-filled or even vegan. Despite their evolution, they still evoke warmth, luck and the magic of midwinter.
The Yule log - from firewood to French delight
Today’s Yule logs come in many forms – chocolate, coffee, fruit-filled or even vegan. Despite their evolution, they still evoke warmth, luck and the magic of midwinter.
Dating back to 1427, when it was first served at the Saxon Royal Court, stollen is a traditional sweet, yeasted bread originally from Central Germany and famously from Dresden.
Over the centuries, the bread changed from being a plain bread to a sweeter bread with richer ingredients. Nowadays, it is usually studded with raisins and candied citrus peels and often filled with marzipan. Oblong in shape and sprinkled with icing sugar, the shape of the traditional stollen symbolises Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes. In Germany, stollen is as much a part of the festive season as Christmas markets and Christmas trees.
According to strict Saxon rule, Stollen shouldn’t be sliced until Christmas, though many now enjoy it from Advent Sunday onwards.
Commercially made stollen has become a popular Christmas food in Britain in recent decades, perhaps due to the two ubiquitous German supermarket chains.
Panettone - Italy’s fluffy festive favourite
The traditional Italian festive bread, panettone, is now increasingly favoured by Brits over more traditional Christmas bakes, particularly amongst younger generations.
A much lighter dessert, panettone is made from sweet dough that has been cured sourdough-style to give it a light, fluffy centre, which is then studded with candied fruit. It was first made by Milanese bakeries to celebrate the arrival of the Christmas season.
Gingerbread: from medieval fairs to Christmas cookies
From festively shaped biscuits to extravagantly decorated gingerbread houses, gingerbread has become a culinary staple of Christmas bake.
Gingerbread was particularly associated with fairs. It was considered good luck to eat a piece of gingerbread bought at a fair. Known as ‘fairings’, these gingerbreads were moulded into different shapes. In Cornwall ‘a proper and complete’ fairing was a spicy ginger biscuit adorned with sugar-coated caraway seeds, candied angelica, almond comfits and macaroons.
Given gingerbread’s connection to festive occasions like fairs it is perhaps not surprising that it should eventually become associated with Christmas.
It has been suggested that gingerbread houses originated in Germany between the 16th and 18th centuries. The trend for gingerbread houses must have spread to Britain at some point during the nineteenth century. In Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1896), Jude Fawley, who had grown up in his aunt’s baking business, takes to building gingerbread houses – called Christminster cakes – complete with ‘traceried windows, and cloisters’, when illness prevents him from working as a stonemason.
The sweet traditions that bring us together
These festive desserts are far more than sugary indulgence. They carry the weight of centuries of tradition and symbolism. As you prepare your Christmas bakes this year, hopefully you’ll have time to think about the stories behind each bite. Happy Christmas from everyone at allmanhall.
For more festive inspiration, keep an eye out for our 12 Days of Christmas blogs arriving throughout December – a dive into every ingredient’s history, sustainability and nutrition, along with a delicious recipe …