Thanksgiving Recipes
It’s that time of the year again. When bakers, cooks, and even bartenders, are baking, roasting, and shaking things up for the holidays. Here’s a round-up of recipes from my blog, my personal favorites, that are great for Thanksgiving and winter holiday fêtes. There are cakes, cocktails, spreads, dips, candied nuts, cheesecake, ice cream…and more! Pecan Pie with Bourbon and Ginger What’s more traditional than pecan...
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- Michele
- November 17, 2017 12:09pm
Wow! what a monster blog today! Thank you, many lovely recipes.
I’m English, and we often use marzipan in seasonal cakes – notably our Christmas cake which is a very rich and dark fruit cake laced with booze (brandy) over several weeks, covered in marzipan and then iced with Royal icing which sets very hard once applied – this is made with icing (powdered) sugar, egg whites and lemon juice.
Christmas cake is decorated with a little paste snowman, holly leaves, silver balls, reindeer, (you can buy all these ready-made) and anything else that takes your fancy on a Christmas theme. The icing is often flipped up in waves, providing a rough, snow-like appearance.
We also traditionally eat a Simnel cake at Easter, which is a slightly lighter fruit cake with a sheet of marzipan laid in the centre inside before being baked, and then covered in marzipan on the outside when cool. This covering is then topped with eleven small balls of marzipan to represent the Apostles minus Judas the traitor.
The word “Simnel” comes from the ancient word for Mothering Sunday when people working often hundreds of miles away from home and Mother, and often in service in a Great House, were allowed one day off to visit the family. So the cake was traditionally made and eaten at that time – the church festival for Mothering Sunday being very close to Easter.
In England we’re not particularly concerned about the religious connotations of these cakes, they are just enjoyed for their taste, novelty and tradition by Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists alike.
We can easily buy ground almond (also called almond powder) in all supermarkets so we don’t need to grind our own. We also find that part of the fun of any seasonal holiday, as for Thanksgiving, is the preparation of special foods. So we often make our own marzipan, it’s very easy with ground almonds, caster (super-fine) sugar, an egg, and a tiny bit of brandy and almond extract flavour.
I hope those who are not English will have been interested in this post.
Best wishes to all.
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[Original source](https://www.davidlebovitz.com/thanksgiving-recipes/)