Traditional Christmas party food: Ponche Navideño

Get out your cutting board and best set of knives. Nothing says “festive” like Christmas party food. Spanish-inspired holiday feasts normally include a large family gathering with traditional tapas such as langostinos con salsa rosa (large prawns with pink sauce) or jamón or queso y chorizo (ham, cheese, and Spanish chorizo sausage).

These scrumptious appetizers are then followed by a main meal and eventually dessert. Host your own Spanish-inspired festivities this season when you make a batch of exotic hot fruit punch. Ponche Navideño is emblematic of the Spanish holidays, which makes it the perfect Christmas party food for the after-meal gathering.

One of the main ingredients of Christmas party food favorite is the tejocote fruit. This tiny red and yellow fruit was once one of the most smuggled fruits across the Mexican border. Due to its natural exotic insect enemies that could easily devastate American agriculture, the tejocote became forbidden to enter the United States. Sometimes still referred to as the “forbidden fruit,” tejocote can be found frozen or jarred in the United States.

Regardless of your Christmas party food menu, this hot fruit punch is sure to complement anything you are serving. Fill your house with the sweet aroma of this traditional Mexican Christmas punch. Guests will be welcomed with the seasonal spices of cinnamon, cloves, and sugar as well as the exotic fruit smells that include tejocotes, apples, and guavas.

Ponche Navideño
8 cups of water
2 cinnamon sticks
5 whole cloves
1 cup tejocotes
6 guavas
1 or 2 apples
1 whole orange, juice and pulp
1 whole piloncillo cone
2 sugar canes
1/2 cup prunes or raisins

In your stock pot of water, add cloves, cinnamon, and orange, and bring to a boil. Add tejocotes and simmer for 5 minutes or until they are soft. Remove the tejocotes from the pot, cut them in half, and remove skins and pits. Add them back into the pot. From here you can add all your remaining ingredients. Stir and simmer for about 30 minutes.

When you are ready to serve your regular Christmas party food, bring out the hot fruit punch. Top your fruit filled cups of punch with a dollop of heavy cream or ice cream. You can also serve the punch without the fruit and eat the fruit separately. When eaten with the fruit, this punch can be quite filling. If you’re serving a lot of Christmas party food, or if you are cooking an entire dinner, consider serving this punch afterwards as a dessert.