by Dave Ellis

You wouldn’t know by looking at me that I like desserts (OK, you would).

Throw in the magical Christmas time and all hopes of losing weight go out the window. Or maybe sliding glass door; it’s bigger.

I did a Google search for “Christmas Deserts” and found a lot of pictures of people wearing Santa hats in the sand. A more aptly titled search (Christmas Desserts) brings up tons of mouth-watering, memory-provoking delectables. Certain foods bring up memories for me as I’m sure they do for you. In fact most of my food memories can be revisited every time I buckle my belt. Ah, le mémoire!

Of course there are as many types of desserts for Christmas as there are strands of tinsel stuck in your vacuum power brush, so I had to narrow the list down.

Gingerbread

This hearty dessert is made of bread and ginger, I guess. People love it so much they use it for building materials. You make mini homes out of it with mortar (frosting), roof tiles (gumdrops) and safety railing (candy canes). Once everything passes code the residents (mice) move in. What do you expect to happen? You build a house out of candy and leave it on a shelf. Might as well put out a flashing licorice ‘VACANCY’ sign. If you can keep your house mouse-free then you can actually enjoy it later in the season, only if you enjoy eating two week old candy that is as hard as it is stale.

Divinity

This is probably the only candy that looks like caulking. You laugh, but put a blob of caulking right next to it to see if anyone can tell the difference. Trust me they won’t, until the first bite – the noticeable difference is that caulking doesn’t have egg whites in it. The impressive part is how you make it – you basically boil sugar, corn syrup and some type of sweetener into a lump and then add nuts (optional). Oh yeah there’s egg whites and some other stuff.

You might want to look it up before following my instructions. I did and found an interesting variation – “Replacing the sugar with brown sugar, and adding a small amount of vinegar results in “sea foam”, according to Irma S. Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking.”
(Wikipedia: Divinity (confectionery)). I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d eat anything called ‘sea foam’, I mean, have you been to the sea? Why not call it ‘pond scum’ or ‘lime deposits’?

Fruitcake

I really don’t have anything to add to this, it has been literally mocked and beat to death.
May it rest in chewy candy pieces.

Yule Log or Bûche de Noël (French always sounds cooler)
I was going to write about figgy pudding but I really don’t know what it is. But apparently some people won’t go until they have some. Back to the log. Yule Log is yet another building material that you can eat. Back in the day I think people’s imaginations weren’t as developed.

Old time guy 1: Let’s make a dessert!
Old time guy 2: OK in what kind of shape?
Old time guy 1: (looks around) Let’s see, either rock, log or dead goat.
Old time guy 2: That’s not dead goat, that’s fruitcake.
Old time guy 1: Log it is.

I had to take one more shot at fruitcake. Yule Log is basically a cake rolled up to look like a log, or a sleeping bag. It is delicious, as far as logs go, and you can burn it for warmth.

I hope you enjoyed this Christmas dessert review. I will be further researching more Christmas confections for the entire month of December. So if you see me stuffing my face, know that it is serious journalism. Just steer clear of my belt buckle, it may take flight any moment.