THE FIRST STAGE OF MAKING THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING

 

This is a gorgeous Christmas pudding, light in texture and full of Christmas flavour, overloaded with too much brandy, but it is Christmas!

(makes 10 small)
(or 1 large pudding)

Ingredients

225g currants
225g sultanas
175g raisins
50 mixed peel
1 orange zest and juice
3 tbsp milk
100ml brandy
150g self-raising flour
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp grated nutmeg
175g butter
150g fresh breadcrumbs
3 medium eggs beaten
150g muscovado sugar

Pre-heat the oven 180 degrees, place all the dried fruits, zest, orange juice, brandy and milk in a bowl and stir well.  In another bowl sieve the flour, spices and a pinch of salt together, leave to one side for a mo while you melt the butter.  Pour the melted butter over the dried fruit mix, stir in and then add the spiced flour mix and mix well, now add the breadcrumbs, eggs, muscovado sugar and mix in well again. 

I like to make 10-12 small puddings so that my husband can have individual portions as he is cake monster lol, even more so at Christmas time!  You can make one beautiful large pudding base pudding, I often do both, so the we have puddings for the Christmas period and a large pudding for the day on the table. 

To cook, I grease and base line the moulds and divide the pudding mix almost to the top of each mould.  I then cover with a folded piece of tin foil with a pleat to allow for expansion and place the small puddings in a roasting tin 3/4 filled with foil and the cover the whole tin with foil and steam for approx one hour until cooked.  If you are making a large pudding, I place the pudding on a upturned side plate in a deep saucepan and fill 2/3 with water and with the lid on steam for approx 3 hours until cooked.  To test if cooked I use the same cake method, insert a skewer and if the skewer comes out clean then the pudding is cooked, tip don't remove the foil top, just pierce through.

Leave to cool and then I like to re-wrap in fresh baking paper and give a good glug of brandy over each pudding,  I keep the puddings in a air tight container and every week I like to add another glug of brandy and turn each pudding over.

 



This is the stage I am at now, I will keep topping up with brandy and turning the puddings so on the big day the are perfect.

On the day I re-heat in the steamer or microwave depending on how much time and cooking space I have!  I love to heat more brandy in a pan and then to serve I take a ladel of the hot brandy and light the ladle and pour over the pudding so it is a proper flaming figgy pudding as that is what we all want on our family Christmas day.  Perfect family time.  Then my dad has to have tons of brandy cream and my husband loves brandy cream and butter and me and my mum have our pudding somewhere in the next week lol!