Christmas is another holiday blessed (burdened) with sacred family culinary tradition. 

It happens in the dead of winter (in the Northern hemisphere, anyway), so it can take some creativity to use seasonal ingredients.  There's always chocolate! 

A tradition in my family has always been an English or Christmas pudding.  It'll kill you, but if you only eat it once a year, it's probably okay. 

Our traditional accompaniment? Hard sauce made from powdered sugar, butter, salt and brandy. We're not proud. Nor are we on a diet!

Check out this creative use of cream puffs, or profiteroles. Arranged in the shape of a wreath and decorated accordingly, this is a really easy and festive dessert.

Fill the puffs with anything from ice cream (if you're serving immediately) to pastry cream to any frosting or icing.

Drizzle with some amazing ganache or even green tinted royal icing. This is what I mean when I talk about mixing and matching components to come up with an original dessert.

Most folks are terrified of fruit cake, but now is your chance to change their minds.

My husband has been making fruit cakes based on Alton Brown's fruit cake recipe for years now. It uses all dried fruits and citrus zests macerated in golden rum.

Make the batter on the stove top. Very easy. Very delicious.

For a reprint of Alton's recipe and step by step instructions, click on the picture below.

How about a trifle?  Couldn't be easier:  you need cake, custard, liqueur or simple syrup, fruit or jam and whipped cream.  

Layer cake cubes or slices sprinkled with liqueur or a flavored syrup in a large pan/bowl with fruit and/or jam, homemade custard (vanilla or chocolate) and top off the whole thing with whipped cream. 

Endless variations are possible--it's the seven layer salad of the dessert world! 

Looks impressive and hard to make, huh? Not really. Make a spongecake in a jellyroll pan. Roll it up in parchment to cool. Unroll and fill with pastry cream, chiboust, stabilized whipped cream, jam, ganache, icing--whatever you'd like. Roll up.

Cut one end of the roll off at an angle. Put that piece against the side of the main roll as a branch off the log. Ice with ganache or buttercream. Decorate with some crisp meringue mushrooms, a dusting of powdered sugar and anything else your imagination leads you to use.

Festive and impressive, but really pretty easy!