Cakes, Etc.

Cakes and other baked goods are commonly served from Christmas to New Year's around the world, with a special emphasis placed on round or ring-shaped items. Italy has chiacchiere, which are honey-drenched balls of pasta dough fried and dusted with powdered sugar. Poland, Hungary, and the Netherlands also eat donuts, and Holland has ollie bollen, puffy, donut-like pastries filled with apples, raisins, and currants.

In certain cultures, it's customary to hide a special trinket or coin inside the cake—the recipient will be lucky in the new year. Mexico's rosca de reyes is a ring-shaped cake decorated with candied fruit and baked with one or more surprises inside. In Greece, a special round cake called vasilopita is baked with a coin hidden inside. At midnight or after the New Year's Day meal, the cake is cut, with the first piece going to St. Basil and the rest being distributed to guests in order of age. Sweden and Norway have similar rituals in which they hide a whole almond in rice pudding—whoever gets the nut is guaranteed great fortune in the new year.

Cakes aren't always round. In Scotland, where New Year's is called Hogmanay, there is a tradition called "first footing," in which the first person to enter a home after the new year determines what kind of year the residents will have. The "first footer" often brings symbolic gifts like coal to keep the house warm or baked goods such as shortbread, oat cakes, and a fruit caked called black bun, to make sure the household always has food.

蛋糕和其他烘焙點心在全球各地都是圣誕到新年間的食物，尤其是圓形、或環形的點心。意大利人做chiacchiere。那是一種用蜂蜜浸透的面團、炸過再撒上糖霜吃；波蘭、匈牙利和荷蘭人吃甜甜圈。荷蘭人的“甜甜圈”olliebollen質地松軟，里面的餡兒有蘋果、葡萄干和加侖子。在某些文化里，還有把硬幣塞進蛋糕里的傳統，吃到的人來年會有好運氣。