Apart from gift-giving, December usually means two things for me: Christmas-themed movies and food.

There’s just something magical about blasting the air-conditioning to wintery temperatures and putting on “Love, Actually”, or “Home Alone” while curling up with your thickest blankets.

How about filling your house with the whiff of fragrant dessert pies? It’s a combination of tastes, sights, and vibes that really puts me in the mood for Christmas.

Over the years, some of our favourite Christmas movies have featured some dishes — some normal, some not so. What could make for a more immersive viewing than to be eating the actual foods alongside the iconic characters on screen?

So this Christmas at Mothership — with the help of foodpanda — we decided to go about recreating some foods from iconic films that we can’t help but watch every year-end.

And while some were failures and others somewhat “successes”, festive cheer abounded.

Banoffee Pie from “Love, Actually”

The one scene everyone always remembers from “Love, Actually” is the one at the end: when Andrew Lincoln in his role of Mark finally confesses his tragically doomed love for Juliet (played by Keira Knightley).

It’s a cute and satisfying ending to their arc and has set the standard for romantic confessions ever since audiences first watched it in 2003.

But to me, the best scene in the movie is the one that features the pair just before the resolution of their story.

The scene has Juliet barging in on Mark at his house, looking for a video that the latter made of her wedding. It’s the moment she comes to the realisation that Mark’s aloofness to her is not because he doesn’t like her but exactly the opposite.

What kicks off the scene is an offer of banoffee pie — a scrumptious combination of banana and toffee.

The ingredients for this sweet treat were easily found on pandamart — which has an impressive variety of items from household items to fresh produce, and delivers within the hour.

Through the foodpanda app we got the following items: butter, condensed milk, digestive biscuits, cream, bananas, and chocolate powder.

To make things even simpler, we also went with a no-bake recipe.

Adapting the recipe from here, we crushed some digestive biscuits for the crust and boiled a can of condensed milk to make the dulce de leche (caramelised milk).

But while most recipes called for three hours of boiling, in the interest of time and an empty stomach we went for an hour instead.

It meant that instead of a thick gooey golden layer we were left with a sauce that was a little too watery.

We trudged ahead adding sliced bananas and hand-whipped cream before sprinkling some chocolate powder over the top.

However, the taste test proved that we had made a mortal miscalculation.

The watery sauce meant that the “pie” had no structure and turned out more like a banoffee soup.

It was hard to ignore, and honestly made the eating experience a little sad.

Verdict: We didn’t finish it for self-preservation’s sake.

Spaghetti and sweets from “Elf”

If you’re lacking in Christmas spirit this year, this might be the dish for you.

Will Ferrell will never not be funny to me, especially if he’s playing an oversized man-child raised as an elf.

Spaghetti and sweets might sound like an odd pairing but in the spirit of the season, we were willing to give it a try.

Buddy’s mission in “Elf” was to redeem his biological father from Santa’s naughty list. With the help of foodpanda, could we potentially turn this bizarre food into something nice?

The clincher was that it ended up being a very simple dish to make.

Using foodpanda, we ordered some pasta from Collin’s — one of the selected restaurants on the app where you can get up to 50 per cent off their full menu for the month of December — and then topped it off with all sorts of confections and lollies that we purchased on pandamart and had delivered to our office within the hour.

Alas, while I personally would’ve preferred if we used plain pasta, my colleagues decided that Aglio olio would be better. Creating the dish was easy — we just poured the candy and biscuits on top, finishing it off with a chocolate drizzle.

The result was a sweet and savoury dish that I probably won’t be eating again. Call me the grinch but I guess some things are better off remaining on screen.

Verdict: Dessert and dinner all in one, but not in a good way.

A lovely cheese pizza just for me from “Home Alone” & quaffle waffle from “Let It Snow”

By this point, we were at two for two in terms of cooking failures.

Without any adult (or editor) supervision we’d been left to our own devices and nothing much to show for it except for a mess in the office pantry and two barely edible dishes.

You could say we were like Singaporean versions of Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone”.

And still in need of proper nourishment, we decided to turn to the experts.

Turning to foodpanda once again, we got ourselves a cheese pizza from Collin’s (the 50 per cent off offer made it an easy choice).

Don’t worry, unlike Kevin, we didn’t abuse and harangue our delivery person.

And because we still hadn’t had our fill of desserts we decided to give one more try at recreating a movie menu item though this time we went with as safe an option as possible.

Netflix’s 2019 Christmas “Let It Snow” may be a romcom stuffed with cinematic clichès but when it comes to the area of culinary arts, it did offer one innovation.

The Harry Potter-inspired “quaffle waffle” served at a local diner in the movie called Waffle Town would have been a nightmare to create from scratch.

Anyone want to split that quaffle waffle from LET IT SNOW this weekend? pic.twitter.com/UuLEXbvSog

— Netflix Tudum (@NetflixTudum) January 31, 2020

So instead we ordered ice cream and waffles from Geláre using foodpanda.

All we had to do was mould the waffles around a mound of ice cream into a circular quaffle-y shape and we were done.

Verdict: Sometimes it's better to take the convenient route to what you really want.

Christmas spirit?

Now I know what you’re asking at this point.

Was it really worth all the trouble just to get into the Christmas spirit?

Looking over all that we have accomplished — which to summarise, includes two failed dishes, one pizza cooked and delivered by someone else, and one quaffle waffle made by someone else but artfully sculpted by us — I couldn’t help but feel that we’d just gotten a lesson on how life doesn’t always go according to plan.

Like Buddy in “Elf” you might start out with good intentions and a noble cause, but that doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing — mistakes are part of the journey.

And when you’re hit with these road bumps, you might need to take a page from Kevin’s book in “Home Alone” — get inventive and creative with what you have.

The important thing is to learn the lesson that “Let It Snow” tries to convey to viewers; “When life offers you something special, you take it”.

That’s why when given the opportunity to try something different, for this article, we gave it a shot.

All in all, we were a bit like Mark from “Love, Actually”. We didn’t get the happy ending we wanted, but we got the ending that we needed.

To celebrate the festive season, foodpanda has a bevy of deals that will make it the perfect partner for your Christmas parties and gatherings — we learned it firsthand, taking advantage of their promos to buy the items used in this article.

Here are some of the deals on offer:

• Enjoy up to 50 per cent off from selected restaurants for the month of December.
• Save 30 per cent when you tapau from selected restaurants via foodpanda pick-up in the month of December.
• Find Christmas essentials like alcohol, sweets, and produce on pandamart at up to 50 per cent off.

The author is currently recovering from writing the cheesiest conclusion for this foodpanda-sponsored article.

Top image from Movieclips’ YouTube channel and Mothership