Our staff share their favourite – and sometimes their least favourite – recipes for Christmas time.

Christmas is an excuse to combine dairy and liquor at any and every opportunity. Eggnog. Cheese and wine. And the best of them all: brandy butter. Cream together unsalted butter, icing sugar and brandy. I don’t measure anything because it leaves me with an excellent excuse to eat at least half of it along the way while I check the balance of ingredients.
– Emily Gale, Online Children’s Specialist

My favourite Christmas dish is my brother’s completely decadent Christmas pudding ice cream and, happily, he makes it every year as it’s by far the thing we grown-ups look forward to the most on the day. The recipe contains lashings of cream, an abundance of dried fruits, heaps of freshly laid farmyard eggs from his Gippsland farm, enough melted dark chocolate to make you break out in a sweat, and a heavy hand of brandy, of course. Basically it’s a light chocolate mousse recipe with the soaked fruits blended through it and it’s completely insane! Once we’ve devoured this there is nothing more than a much-needed nap required from the day.
– Emily Harms, Head of Marketing and Communications

I’m not much of a cook, but my favourite thing to eat at Christmas is my mother’s trifle. Every year she make a ginormous bowl of trifle (enough for 20+ plus people) filled with jelly, custard, fresh berries, sponge cake and rich cream. It’s so good. I also swear by this rocky road recipe (good quality melted chocolate, marshmallows, peanuts or almonds, turkish delight) – it’s extremely easy and always a crowd pleaser. Perfect for non-cooks such as myself. I’ve made it plenty of times and always get far more credit than I deserve.
– Nina Kenwood, Digital Marketing Manager

The worst is very much anything that was first made in QLD and involves a can of condensed milk.
– Chris Gordon, Event Manager

As someone with an undying appetite for anything baked, Christmas is an excellent time for me. My mother and I are complete fruit fiends, so Christmas always involves copious quantities of all the summer fruits being proffered at all times. Ludicrously, the only festive dish that I am not excited about at this time of year is Christmas pudding, despite my grandmother’s being a wonderful (and, apparently, truly excellent) constant throughout my life. I usually manage a small slice with her brandy custard each year, but only because I feel like I’m denying my heritage if I don’t!
– Elke Power, editor of Readings Monthly

I haven’t eaten meat in close to ten years now and these days, I honestly hardly notice this omission from my diet. This said, there is one particular food that trips me up each year … And even though I’m sure crackling tastes absolutely nothing like I remember, I’m always tempted by its salty, crunchy allure when my family puts it on the table at Christmas. Luckily, I do have some favourite meat-free Christmassy dishes to turn to including Ottolenghi’s ‘Caramelized garlic tart’ (from Plenty) which I made for three different Christmas celebrations last year (so many peeled garlic cloves).
– Bronte Coates, Digital Content Coordinator