Christmas dinner fruits, chocolate, raisins, and/or pine nuts, known as panettone, followed by "torrone" (enriched with cherries, chocolate, sweets and more), nougat and nuts. In Southern Italy instead of one cake they serve many kinds of marzipan, biscuits, zeppole, cannoli, candied fruits, and fresh fruits. In the last few decades, panettone has become popular as a Christmas sweet all over Italy. Pandoro is also a very popular cake at Christmas and New Year, accompanied by a good Champagne. One typical Dutch tradition is that of 'gourmet,' an evening-long event where small groups of people sit together around a gourmet-set and use their
Pound cake of any kind. However, the Caribbean parts of the world that speak French traditionally add rum to the ingredients for Christmas Eve or even mashed bananas for extra moisture. In some cases the French might have beaten egg whites instead of whole eggs to lighten the batter. Other variants include adding chocolate or lemon juice for flavour. In Mexico, the pound cake is called "panqué". The basic recipe of Mexican "panqué" is much like the traditional U.S. recipe. Most common variants are "panqué con nueces" (pound cake with walnuts) and "panqué con pasas" (pound cake with raisins). "Ponqué" is the