No one recipe I found seemed to hit the right note with me. I've never made Christmas pudding before but I wanted to make it really special in case this was the first and only time, and this is going to be an amalgam of every recipe I currently have (and what I saw of Delia's Christmas Special the other night).
The contenders are, Good Housekeeping's Menus circa 1954, this was a birthday present, and despite the year, it's not as old fashioned as I though it might be, there's no MSG or anything like that. The oddest ingredient called for in most recipes in margarine, which I don't think is for sale in the UK anymore. Apparently margarine can be substituted for suet in a Christmas pudding - no thanks. Another ingredient deemed necessary is gravy browning, lets just say Good Housekeeping's pudding looks like a turd (I'll post a picture comparing it with mine)
Winter Puddings from the Cordon Bleu Cookery School was published in 1977 and is part of a whole set of mini books. I also have their Soups and Starters and am totally desperate for Memorable Meals and Cooking from Abroad. I always assumed Cordon Bleu to be concerned with predominantly French food, but by definition winter puddings are British fare, so Spotted Dicks and Apple Hats all round. Their recipe looks a little bland and is conspicuous by the absence of hard booze, the first suggested liquid is milk. Thanks grandma.
And I think we all know what to expect from Nigella Christmas. There's more sugar than flour here, plus honey, plus VODKA! And also bizarrely, no nuts. She also recommends making a 3 pint pudding, not to eat, but to look at. But out of all the books she is the only one who suggests leaving the mixture to infuse overnight (Delia too, of course), and also to soak the dried fruit in alcohol. I wonder if anyone has ever eaten a Christmas pudding sober.
So, the ingredients I used (and didn't take a picture of, you're just going to have to take my word for it) were
-a 500g bag of mixed dried fruits which I think was made up of raisins, currants and sultanas, although what is the big difference between the three?
-mixed peel, from a tub, not freshly made - sorry Delia
-200ml of Captain Morgan rum to soak them in. I managed about 30 minutes, but thanks for the 1 week suggestion Nigella, I'll consider that next time I want to make prison wine. (this is what the bottle looked like after the boyfriend and I finished... cooking)
-some pistachios and walnuts because the boyfriend likes nuts, despite almond being the only recommended nut (I don't want to hear any of that crap about almonds being fruit).
-stem ginger in syrup, for no reason at all other than getting carried away in the dried fruit department of the supermarket. Which is also the reason for...
-dried and maraschino cherries
-prunes, I'm getting quite a taste for them, and because Nigella said so
-dried Sweet William pears. OK, the jig is up, my boyfriend's name just happens to be William. Awww sweet! Don't all puke in your mouths at once.
-plain flour and white breadcrumbs - boring
-vegetarian suet left over from the Bacon Roly Poly, mmmmmmm
-a grated apple and a grated carrot. Good Housekeeping suggests either one, but I was intrigued by the carrot and wanted the two to fight it out inside the pud.
-3 eggs. 3 eggs to rule them all, 3 eggs to find them. 3 eggs to guide them all, and in the darkness bind them! (special nerd points if you know what the hell I'm talking about)
-light brown sugar, because I don't like muscavado and the whole thing was beginning to look pretty sweet to me already
-ground allspice, which I'm going to assume is the same as mixed spice
-ground cinnamon
-vanilla essense, thanks Good Housekeeping!
-ground nutmeg, along with several slices of my knuckle as I was grating it. Everybody always makes a big stink about the superiority of grinding it yourself as opposed to buying it all ready and prepared, so I guess they expect you to sprinkle your food with blood and curses! Incidentally, did you know that nutmeg is a psychotropic drug and that chomping down a couple of nuts can give you a pretty heavy high? Apparently several people a year have to be taken to the hospital to be treated for the effects of nutmeg overdose! I'm serious, this is not Captain Morgan talking!
-the rind and juice of one lemon, because I was getting all carried away with the excitement of the thing and wanted to put more and more ingredients in
-a pinch of salt
Also to go in were two silver coins which had been soaking in Coke and vinegar overnight to 'disinfect' them? Or something...
The bowl with the mixture stood in the corner and thought about what it had done over night, and in the morning I bounced to work and left the boyfriend with very particular steaming instructions, all 6 hours worth of them. I kept calling throughout the day to double check that he put a pleat in the foil cover before tying it down to let the steam expand it, and that he was checking that the water hadn't boiled away, and that he was washing the dishes, hoovering and doing my laundry as well. There must have been something wrong with his phone because it kept going dead every time right about after he said "Shut up and leave me alone" or "I'm not your maid". Strange.
It turned out that there was too much mixture for the bowl I had so we ended up making two large puds and two little ones which I'm going to give away as presents to people I want to potentially poison on Christmas day.
This is what the pretty little ones look like now that I've wrapped them all up nice and tidy
And this is what the big ugly one that my family will be enjoying looks like.
I'll post results on Christmas day after we steam it again and eat it, but at the moment it's maturing under my bed and giving off the most amazing orangey, rummy deep aroma. Just hope it doesn't go mouldy before the big day...
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