Eat Drink Play:
4 new cookbooks to create festive appetizers, cocktails, cakes and more
Four Christmas cookbooks now available to make festive appetizers, cocktails, cakes and more.
The fall cookbook avalanche brought with it some wintery favorites. A cookbook with platters for small holiday gatherings, a collection on warming winter cocktails and a veritable masterpiece on modern fruit cakes from a Martha Stewart alum are among the inspired picks. And for those who want to escape to classic, Edwardian-era dishes, there’s even a new Christmas-themed cookbook delving into the holiday foods of the PBS series “Downton Abbey.” Here are four fabulous holiday-inspired cookbooks.
Share + Savor
Cheese and charcuterie platters are about to get even better. In “Share + Savor: Create Impressive and Indulgent Appetizer Boards for Every Occasion” (Page Street, $22), author and blogger Kylie Mazon-chambers adds appetizers and inventive finger foods to 20 eye-catching platters, transforming them into perfect meals with three or four easy, homemade elements.
Mazon-chambers, creator of the “Cooking with Cocktail Rings” blog, even gives her boards cultural, regional or holiday themes. The Greek-inspired Board, for example, features easy-to-make spanakopita bites and sweet and spicy tzatziki. And the Southern-inspired Board includes green tomato chutney and sausage-laced boudin balls with Cajun aioli.
There are 60 recipes in all, everything from dips and crostini to dumplings. Add in complementary veggies and crackers and you’ll be eating pretty for years to come.
Fruit Cake
Food stylist Jason Schreiber has transformed his lifelong love of baking and high-profile stints with Martha Stewart and celebrity cake king Ron Ben-Israel into a visually stunning and somewhat game-changing first cookbook about the role of fruit in cake.
Featuring 38 different fruits and 75 tantalizing recipes, Schreiber’s “Fruit Cake: Recipes for the Curious Baker” ( William Morrow, $32.50) reimagines the much-maligned fruitcake in modern recipes that use fruit to enhance flavor and moisture. Chapters are organized by cake category, such as “Soaked,” and recipes run the gamut from winter-perfect polenta pound cake with spiced mandarins (Constant Cravings) and banana tiramisu (Soaked) to passion fruit lime Pavlova (Showstoppers).
You’ll never think of fruitcake the same way. Now, it’s fruit and cake.
The Official Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook
You don’t have to be an English aristocrat to enjoy Yorkshire pudding, spinach balls à L’italienne or the other indulgent dishes in “The Official Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook” ( Weldon Owen, $35).
In this new collection, author and British culinary historian Regula Ysewijn unveils 85 Edwardian-era holiday recipes inspired by the Emmy-winning PBS series “Downton Abbey.”
While jugged hare with prunes and raisins may never grace your Christmas table, the classic coq au vin, hazelnut cake with coffee icing or deceptively easy anchovy eclairs, an hors d’oeuvre made with puff pastry and anchovies, certainly and deliciously could.
Winter Drinks
Ubiquitous mulled wines and eggnogs get a delicious makeover in this small yet mighty new collection. “Winter Drinks: Over 75 Recipes to Warm the Spirits including Hot Drinks, Fortifying Toddies, Party Cocktails and Mocktails” (Ryland Peters & Small, $15) is organized into chapters such as Comforting (hot chocolates, warm milks), Invigorating (coffee drinks, teas), Restorative (revivers, mulls) and Celebratory (sparklers, party drinks). Classics loll alongside unexpected twists, like toffee apple hot chocolate, Catalan coffee punch, manuka honey tea and Winter Gin Tonica, made with ginger ale and a clove-studded garnish.
Cocktail or mocktail, these recipes, compiled by editorial director Julia Charles, will keep you warm and cozy all season long.