Bizzare dessert rituals that are traditional food in their home countries

What’s bizarre for one culture is normal for the observers, there’s a better term for this – culture shock. Every culture has gone through centuries if not millenniums to develop every traditional food we see today. If a certain unusual dessert exists, eaten at a specific celebration or time, it is likely to hold some local significance. In some cases, nobody knows where a certain ritual or custom might have popped up. Nevertheless, they persist and make for some fascinating if not bizarre dessert rituals.

1. Granita

It’s almost unimaginable to have ice cream, much less an ice dessert for breakfast in India, but come summer, the Italians love to indulge in an ice dessert called Granita for breakfast. Considering all things, and how moms and grandmas in our country would say we might catch a cold, this ritual does seem a little bizarre. The Italians, however, have this almost frozen dessert made with water, sugar, and fruit, a technique they learned from the Arabs centuries ago, for breakfast alongside coffee and brioscia. It came in classic flavors such as lemon, pistachio, almond, coffee, and strawberry but with time other flavors started gaining popularity too.

2. Sufganiyot

This is the traditional food or rather sweet donuts associated with Hannukkah, where Sufganiyot, is eaten to honor the miracle of the oil that burned in Jerusalem’s ancient temple. Hanukkah is celebrated for 8 nights, by Jews worldwide, considered the “Festival of Lights”, celebrated in either November or December, according to the Hebrew calendar, with lighting the menorah and spinning the dreidel as a custom. Linked to the burning of oil, eating fried foods is a custom and Sufganiyot is a deep-fried donut minus the hole in the center. The Sufganiyot might or might not have frosting, the modern ones do, but almost always are filled with jams and jellies, although other creamier fillings are common these days too.

3. Kanamara Matsuri in Japan

NSFW alert for this one! Kanamara Matsuri is a festival celebrating the phallus, not proverbially or metaphorically, in Japan. It’s celebrated on the first Sunday of April, and each year people turn up in huge numbers. Three shrines containing phallic statues move around the streets of the Kanayama Shrine, where the Kanamara-sama is revered, said to protect the lower part of the body, ever since Goddess Izanami got burnt while giving birth to a Fire God. Needless to say, the shrine very smartly hides phallic and yonic around its premises from its anvils to its walls. Coming to desserts, the pop-up sweet shops at the site serve sweet treats which are yonic or phallic-shaped lollies that visitors walk around with, most of which are pink. What’s more, they vary in size from the small size of actual lollipops to the larger ones, as big as one’s hands.

4. Mämmi

Mämmi is one of the classic Finnish Easter desserts, that looks like someone left a puddle of chocolate cake in milk. There are also chocolate eggs called Kinder or Fazer Mignon, but given Easter customs and hunting for colorful chocolate eggs, that one ain’t strange at all. Mämmi, on the other hand, looks a bit you might hesitate to eat if you don’t know what it is. Mämmi looks like a pudding and is made with rye flour, malt powder, water, molasses, salt, and orange zest. This whole thing is served in a pool of cream of milk. It’s grainy and tastes strange as well, it’s described as trying some kind of beaten-down dark rye bread with a not-so-pleasant flavor that isn’t too bad either.

5. Churros

Would you associate a deep-fried snack once made and eaten by the Spanish shepherds as a Christmas specialty? Seems a bit bizarre doesn't it especially when you consider the likes of plum cakes and Dundee cakes? We are talking about Churros, talk about it with the older generations and they will find it a little queer as well. But as the Spanish immigrants introduced Churros to Latin America, namely Mexico they got paired with chocolate sauce and have been inseparable since. In fact, the internet and North America, in particular the US further made it mainstream. It’s unimaginable to have a Christmas in Latin America without churros these days.