Spiced brandy, orange liqueur and tea make for a warming British twist on Irish coffee

A good slug of spiced brandy, hot black tea and boozy orange cream: this festive winter cocktail twists the classic Irish coffee to create a very British drink that draws inspiration from my mum’s love of orange liqueur-spiked cream and a firm Yorkshire favourite – the cuppa.

Sophie Bratt, bar manager, Nobu Bar at Nobu Hotel London Portman Square , London W1

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They come in all sizes, they blossom and you can eat their delicious fruit straight off the tree

On the other side of my village is an apple farm, and every year I wait eagerly for their sandwich board to appear, announcing the arrival of apple season. I’ll happily eat two apples a day until they put the sign back in the barn until the following autumn.

A really great apple brings me an inordinate amount of joy – and the best apples I’ve ever eaten were picked right off the tree. So, if you’re looking for a gift for the hard-to-buy-for gardener in your life, an apple tree is a wonderful choice.

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Farmers say good growing conditions will result in a bumper crop, with the average sprout 30mm in diameter

Farmers are forecasting that brussels sprouts will be 25% bigger this year.

Good growing conditions, the introduction of new varieties, and a dose of sea air have resulted in a crop of super-sized sprouts for this festive season.

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An old friend of a Christmas pork recipe, and deliciously fragile almond cookies dipped into chocolate

A good Christmas recipe is like an old friend: sound, reliable and to be trusted. You also know, and hope, that they will appear at least once over the festivities. In this house, there is a much-loved pork recipe, where the meat is flattened, then rolled with a stuffing of black pudding, onions and sausage meat, then slow roasted and served with its roasting juices and a puddle of apple sauce.

I choose a cut with plenty of fat, belly or shoulder, and spread the stuffing over it before rolling and tying it up with butcher’s string. Any left will appear cold, thinly sliced and with a red cabbage slaw. If there is any apple is sauce left, I’ll have that, too, thank you.

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Quick and easy to make, this dessert keeps ready in the freezer to bring drama to your Christmas table

The pressure to be an effortless host over the Christmas season is high, and my biggest tip is to have a thoughtfully stocked freezer. As well as batch-making mince pies, biscuit logs and vol-au-vents, I love a festive-themed ice-cream or, in this instance, semifreddo. This cassata-inspired one is my new festive favourite – it’s embarrassingly easy (pretend it’s harder, if you like) and triumphs on so many Christmas flavours. Decorate as elaborately as you wish, piling it high with glacé fruits and marzipan sculptures, or just with a glossy, chocolate glaze.

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These cute little biscakes make the perfect host gifts

Sur Chocolates – of mainly alfajores fame – have brought out a special Christmas edition called the Baubles collection , £35.

Their Eggnog bauble is a cinnamon biscake and eggnog ganache covered in a 33% white chocolate. Is there a little marshmallow inside it? It looks like it. This was the sweetest of the three. Our favourite was probably the Alfa-Jaffa, a 70% dark organic Peruvian chocolate with a vanilla biscake, orange ganache and jelly – very Christmassy and I can never get enough of orange-flavoured things in winter. Monkey Puzzle is a 63% Arriba Ecuadorian chocolate with a monkey puzzle seed-layered biscake and the alfajor’s famous dulce de leche.

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Serve with cold whipped cream for a decadent festive treat that provides a welcome counterpoint to all those heavy puddings and pastries

At Christmas, there is a much-loved and valued place for raisins and citrus peel steeped in booze and unrefined sugars – stirred into puddings, say, or to fill crumbly, short pastry. Of course, I’m not denying this most obvious fact, but please don’t downplay the pivotal role that chocolate plays in the mix. Too much stewed fruit is dispiriting, but put a bowl of whipped, deeply chocolatey mousse on the table and the world is righted. If we can agree that Christmas is about decadence and indulgence, then we can also agree that a rich, velvety chocolate mousse with boozy things to pour on top is an absolute must.

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Now’s the time to push the boat out on something really nice, to serve at dinner or as a generous gift

Château Musar, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon 2018 (from £36, thewinesociety.com ; Waitrose) When it comes to choosing wines to splash out on as a gift for a wine lover or as a spectacular treat to elevate your Christmas dinner, the European classics tend to come top of the list. For no-expense-spared red wines, that might mean a gorgeously ready-to-drink topflight Bordeaux such as Château d’Issan, Margaux 2012 (£65, hedonism.co.uk ), a suave-textured, intensely flavoured Rioja such as CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva 2017 (from £50, hic-winemerchants.co.uk ; thewinesociety.com ); a nuanced, silky, peppered-meaty northern Rhône Syrah, such as Domaine Georges Vernay Blonde du Seigneur Côte-Rôtie 2021 (£69.95, yapp.co.uk ); or the luxurious cherries, strawberries, oregano and tobacco found in a top-table Tuscan such as Capanna Brunello di Montalcino 2018 (£58.50, thegoodwineshop.co.uk ). This year, however, I wonder if a classic and no-less hedonistic wine from another part of the wine world might send out a much-needed seasonal message of peace and goodwill at the festive table or under the tree: the multilayered, sweetly spiced, ethereally-long-finishing Lebanese red of Château Musar.

Zuccardi Concreto Malbec, Uco Valley, Argentina 2021 (from £29, laithwaites.co.uk ; fieldandfawcett.co.uk ; farehamwinecellar.co.uk ) Staying in Christmas-treat territory but taking a step-or-two down from the pricing peaks of trad’ European fine wine, the £20 to £30 price range is where I reckon you can find bottles with the highest pleasure-per-pound ratio around right now – a place filled with high-spec wines that have yet to see their prices fully inflated by reputation. They can come from anywhere in the world, but a list of some of the red wines I’ve been eyeing up for my own Christmas list and menu includes a trio from the southern hemisphere: a prime example of the graceful progress made by top malbec producers in the high-altitude Andean vineyards of Argentina’s Uco Valley, in the shape of the elegantly plump and perfumed Zuccardi Concreto; a seamlessly silky Cape answer to St-Emillion, Keermont Merlot, Stellenbosch, South Africa 2020 (£28, swig.co.uk ); and a rich, spicy, succulent shiraz-based Barossa Valley red from one of Australia’s most celebrated producers: Henschke Henry’s Seven 2022 (£29, Booths).

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When you start shouting ‘encore’ at your emptied plate, you know something serious has happened

Claro , 12 Waterloo Place, London SW1Y 4AU. Smaller plates £9-£24; bigger plates £18-£48; desserts £14-£16. Wines from £42 a bottle

Email offers restaurants dreadful opportunities, and sometimes they grab them with both sweaty hands. Take Claro, the second venture from Israeli chef Ran Shmueli , following the success of the first in Tel Aviv. Let’s get the headline into the opening paragraph. At Claro, which serves food best described as eastern Mediterranean with Middle Eastern influences, I thrilled to some of the best dishes I have eaten this year, many of them plant-based. The cooking is smart, at times complex but most of all delicious. Which makes the whole email thing feel like dealing with an objectively beautiful but desperately insecure person, who is just gagging for affirmation.

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