It’s best to start this article with a warning: you’ll probably put on weight just by reading the following lines and looking at the photos. It’s true that what’s really fattening is not what we eat between Christmas and New Year’s, but what we eat between New Year’s and Christmas…
However, the calorific load of Portugal’s Christmas traditions is not to be underestimated, so it’s good to get some exercise these days, even if it means walking to buy presents.
Other countries pride themselves on their bountiful tables on Christmas Eve, with delicacies such as foie gras, oysters, smoked salmon, sea urchins, seafood and even – for the very rich, of course – luxury products such as champagne and caviar.
The Portuguese, on the other hand, are more restrained when it comes to the main dish on Christmas Eve. Some families have a tradition of turkey, which is common in other countries. Others, especially in the north of the country, have a habit of eating octopus. But the dish that the overwhelming majority choose for the night of 24 December is bacalhau com todos, i.e. boiled cod fish with potatoes, cabbage, egg and chickpeas.
So, if the meal is simple, why is Christmas so dreaded by those who are afraid of gaining a few kilos? The answer lies in sweets. Yes, the Portuguese eat a lot of sweets at this time of year, and this isn’t limited to the 24th and 25th of December. At the beginning of the month, or even earlier, all the pastry shops have their Christmas sweets ready and the habit of eating Christmas sweets lasts the whole month of December and goes on until Three Kings Day.
In addition to the generous amounts of sugar and eggs they contain, Portuguese Christmas sweets are usually fried, which increases the calorie count even more.
Some sweets are easier to make at home than others. French toast (or golden slices), for example, are relatively easy to make. Others, like bolo-rei, are much more elaborate and hardly anyone makes them at home.
Carla Gonçalves, a computer scientist by profession, is an exception. Living in Lisbon, from a family in Beira Alta, she makes a point of making all the sweets she puts on the Christmas table herself and takes three days just to make them.
“I try to buy all the Christmas presents by the end of the first week of December, and then I dedicate myself to cooking,” she tells Euronews. “I then start to do all the shopping I need to prepare the various sweets, leaving the eggs until last.” Before Christmas, the last three days are spent cooking: “The first day is for making the preparations, cutting the fruit, slicing the bread and crumbling the bread. For the formigos (traditional cake from the north) I need the bread crumbed, while for the golden slices I need the bread sliced.” She then spends a whole day on the filhoses and another on the bolo-rei, as both recipes require the dough to rise, which takes several hours. In the case of bolo-rei, the dough has to ferment three times.
Making bolo-rei at home is very rare, but it’s a recipe that Carla inherited from her mother: “At the time of the 25 April 1974 revolution, there was a bakers’ strike that lasted 15 days. So, as we had no bread in the house, my mum learnt how to handle the leavened dough and so she also learnt how to make bolo-rei,” she explains.
Other desserts such as rice pudding or vermicelli, which are not necessarily typical of Christmas and are eaten all year round, are also part of many families’ Christmas menus. In the case of rice pudding, it’s a must on Carla’s family’s Christmas table. Homemade, of course.
The truth is that fewer and fewer families have time to make sweets. That’s why pastry shops have their hands full, if you’ll excuse the pun, at this time of year.
Pastry shops with a lot of work
One of Lisbon’s oldest and most prestigious pastry shops, which many people trust for Christmas sweets, is 1800, in Largo do Rato. Open since 1857, you’re confronted with tile panels dating from the renovation in the 1920s as soon as you walk through the door. But, especially at this time, it’s the myriad of typical cakes and sweets that beckon you in.
If the workload increases considerably with the arrival of the Christmas season, the 23rd and 24th of December are the craziest days at the establishment. The boss, Gentil Pereira, and the manager, Pedro Gaspar, don’t sleep that night: “ We don’t go to bed for two days. We come to work on the 23rd and don’t go home until the 24th, when we close. We stay here making the fried food and the Christmas cakes and we don’t sleep,” says Pedro Gaspar.
On 24 December, like other pastry shops, 1800 closes its entire café service to dedicate itself solely to selling out-of-home cakes, above all to respond to the hundreds of Christmas dinner orders placed by customers in the previous days.
Turnover on that day is “double or triple that of a normal day”, he adds. He doesn’t risk giving a figure in terms of money, but he tells us that “several hundred, maybe 300” king cakes and queen cakes are sold on 24 December alone.
So what are these sweets that delight the Portuguese (and make nutritionists’ nightmares) at Christmas time?
Rabanadas / Golden slices
While this is one of the most popular Christmas sweets in Portugal, the name is the source of an old conflict: in the north, it’s known as “rabanadas”. In the south and Lisbon, it goes by the more pompous name of “golden slices” and some even call it “paridas slices”.
The recipe is simple: slices of bread (flatbread or “cacete”) soaked in milk and eggs, fried and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. The origin probably comes from the French pain perdu, a similar dessert made in France to utilise leftover bread, popular in certain regions all year round (not necessarily at Christmas).
Dreams
Another extremely popular Christmas sweet with a simple recipe is the dream. Delicious and fluffy – the quality of a dream is usually measured by its fluffiness – when freshly made, they start to lose their funkiness the next day, even if no one can resist eating the dreams left over from the evening meal on Christmas Day. After several days, they turn from “dreams” into “nightmares”.
They are made from a very liquid dough, based on wheat flour and eggs, which is (you’ll have guessed) fried and coated in sugar… lots of sugar. There are some variations that can be made with carrot purée (more popular in the south) or pumpkin purée (more common in the north). The latter type is also known as velhoses.
Broas Castelar
Broa Castelar owes its name to the Castelar brothers, owners of the now defunct Confeitaria Francesa in downtown Lisbon, where this recipe was born. It’s a small ellipse-shaped cake (it’s impossible to eat just one) made with eggs, sweet potato and almonds.
A sweeter variant, smaller and with more eggs, sprinkled with colourful dragueias, became popular under the name of broa de espécie.
Filhoses
Filhós is a sweet, similar to sonho, made from a dough based on flour and eggs that is fried and coated in sugar, but there are almost as many recipes for filhoses as there are regions in Portugal: “There are areas where there are lots of eggs, others where there are few eggs. It’s also typical to add brandy, particularly aguardente bagaceira, because it gives it a special perfume, and orange,” explains Carla Gonçalves. The big difference with sonhos is that the dough is leavened.
Coscorões
Coscorão is a thinner, crispier variant of filhós, very similar to oreillette (which is even thinner), a traditional sweet in France at Carnival time.
Blueberries
Azevia is shaped like a rissol and consists of a pastry filled with a chickpea-based sweet, and there is also a sweet potato variant. It is also fried and coated in sugar.
Queen cake
Less famous than bolo-rei, this is a variant for those who aren’t a fan of candied fruit, as it doesn’t contain any and is enhanced with dried fruit.
King cake
We’ve saved for last the one that lives up to its name, as it’s the king of the Christmas table and very few Portuguese families can do without it. Curiously, it started out as a typical cake not for Christmas, but for Three Kings’ Day, inspired by similar cakes typical of other countries, such as the Spanish Rosca de Reyes (also popular in Mexico, with some differences) or the French Couronne des Rois, also called Gâteau des Rois. It was based on the latter that Balthazar Castanheiro Júnior, owner of the Confeitaria Nacional (a bicentenary house in downtown Lisbon, which still exists today), created the bolo-rei at the end of the 19th century.
It’s a round cake with a hole in the middle, made from a fluffy dough that has to rise three times, mixed with dried fruit and candied fruit. With a new layer of nuts, candied fruit and sugar on top, it is brushed with beaten eggs before baking in the oven.
Initially, in keeping with the tradition of similar cakes in Spain and France, each bolo-rei contained a toast (a small ornament) and a dried bean. The toast was supposed to bring luck to whoever happened to have it in their slice, and the bean meant that whoever kept it would have to pay for the next bolo-rei.
However, a 2011 law regulated this practice (although without banning it completely) and meant that the fava bean and the toast fell out of favour. Today, almost all king cakes on sale in Portugal no longer include them.
Other sweets whose sale is usually restricted to 24 December should also be mentioned: lamprey with egg threads and chocolate logs. I’m sure we’ve forgotten some cakes, as the creativity of Portuguese pastry chefs is endless when it comes to Christmas.
Happy holidays and… watch out for the thread!