Christmas may be a time to spend with your family, but it’s also an excuse to eat great fatty foods. While most people seem to stick with their family’s tried and true recipes, these outrageously over-the-top Christmas recipes might just be what it takes to inspire you to try something new this year.
Oh Crawfish Tree, Oh Crawfish Tree
If you want to make a food Christmas-y, just shape it into a Christmas tree before serving and voila –it’s festive. Need proof? Well, it’s hard to beat this fantastic crawfish tree spotted in a 1962 cookbook by Steve Noyes, who, like me, wonders what sits atop this fishy tree. I hope it’s salmon pate shaped like an angel.
Frosty the Cheeseball Man
The saddest part of Frosty the Snowman’s tale is when he melts –even if we know that one day he’ll be back to life again. In Charles Phoenix’s Frosty the Cheeseball Man story though, the melting is only the beginning of a delicious fondue treat. It’s by far the most fun way to serve a cheeseball at a holiday party.
Holiday Scotch Eggs
Scotch eggs are a delicious year-round treat that involves wrapping hardboiled eggs in sausage and then deep frying the whole mess. To add a little holiday touch to the recipe, Adora’s Box used quail eggs and combined the sausage with chestnuts and cranberries. Delicious, deep fried and seasonal? Count me in.
The True Love Roast
If you’ve ever noticed how many birds are in the Twelve Days of Christmas, then the name should give you some idea of what you’re in for when you order the True Love Roast from Heal Farm in Devon, England. While the company doesn’t follow the recipe of the song, it does feature twelve different types of birds (48 birds in total) with eight types of stuffing. In all, this Frankenbird feast feeds 125 people, and takes about 10 hours to cook. As for what specific birds and stuffings to expect, here’s their rundown:
- Goose filled with orange and walnut stuffing.
- Chicken with hazelnut and ginger.
- Pheasant with juniper stuffing.
- Aylesbury duck with sage and onion.
- Barbary duck with Persian fruit stuffing.
- Poussin and guinea fowl layered with parsley, lemon and thyme.
- Partridge and pigeon squab set in juniper stuffing.
- Mallard duck layered with cranberry and lemon and whole boned quail filled with cranberry and orange relish.
TurDunkin'
Don’t let the name fool you. This TurDunkin’ by Unwholesome Foods doesn’t contain multiple types of fowl like its “derkin” cousin. Instead, it is a turkey brined in orange and strawberry Dunkin’ Donuts Coolattas, stuffed with Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins, covered in chocolate and sprinkles and served with hash browns and coffee gravy. It’s like all the best breakfast foods got together and made a baby with your favorite Christmas dish.
Turkey Cake
Hate having to plate mashed potatoes, turkey, sweet potatoes, etc. all individually? Then maybe you should give Chow’s Turkey Cake a chance. While they invented this dish for Thanksgiving, it could easily be served up for a festive Christmas dish instead. Essentially, this dish consists of turkeyloaf layers held together with mashed potatoes and topped with sweet potatoes and marshmallows. Finally you can skip piling them all on your plate in a pile and just take a slice of cake instead.
Deep Fried Christmas Dinner
It’s common knowledge that deep frying anything makes it better and while plenty of people deep fry their turkey these days, the rest of Christmas dinner is still largely ignored by the fryer. But Chris Christoforou, owner of England’s Hollywood Fish Bar, aims to change all of that. His restaurant’s deep fried Christmas dinner includes turkey, potatoes, stuffing, broccoli, carrots, pigs in a blanket, brussel sprouts and a pie all deep fried to crispy, fatty perfection. If only we could have the Neatorama family Christmas in England.
Christmas Dinner in a Can
If you’ve always enjoyed the conveyance of the military’s MRE meals and wished it was easier to enjoy such simplicity when it comes to big holiday meals, then you might just be the ideal customer for the Hot Can Christmas Dinner or the Tinner. Yes, there are, indeed, two separate companies selling (or at least claiming to sell) Christmas dinners that come from a can.
The Hot Can is a self-heating product that merely requires you to open the rubber lid, place the lid under the can, pierce the outer jacket with the included key and then peel open the can. The specially designed packaging will actually heat up your dinner for you. When it’s all ready, enjoy a turkey casserole with winter vegetables, sausage, stuffing balls and a cranberry jelly.
Alternatively, the Tinner provides you with a complete Christmas dinner although you will actually have to heat it yourself. Inside each Tinner, you will find scrambled eggs and bacon, mince pies, turkey, potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, raw carrots and parsnips, brussel sprouts or broccoli, and a Christmas pudding to finish things off.
Either way you go, it’s a great way to enjoy Christmas dinner without leaving the house to visit family or hitting the stove to cook up something tasty.
Cherpumple Pie
If your turducken, Twelve Days Roast or TurDunkin’ didn’t satiate your need for things stuffed in other things prior to baking, then the Cherpumple should. This glorious beast of a dessert invented by Charles Phoenix is made by baking a pumpkin pie inside a spice cake, an apple pie inside a yellow cake and a cherry pie inside a white cake and then piling them together and securing the bonds with frosting.
The Eggnog Cake
It might not be quite as out there as the Cherpumple, but a twelve-layer, red-and-green, eggnog-flavored Christmas cake is certainly worth a mention when it comes to crazy holiday foods. You can find a recipe to make one for yourself over at Bakingdom.
Pickle Candy Canes
For another fun take on a Christmas classic, don’t forget the NeatoShop’s Pickle Candy Canes that taste as salty and sweet as they look –though they probably aren’t as refreshing as the classic version .
The Nativity Scene
By the way, food doesn’t have to just fill your belly during the holiday season, it can also be used to decorate as John discovered with this great food-based nativity set.
Do you already eat something sort of nutty for Christmas? If so, tell us about your favorite crazy Christmas treat in the comments.