Christmas Pud

This weekend I am making a Christmas pudding. It’s a task I approach with trepidation as my last Christmas pudding was a complete disaster. Let’s just say it’s an unpleasant task digging for $20-worth of $2 coins in a mouldy Christmas pud...

But for all that, I am looking forward to it and hoping that this year it will be much better. This year, for example, I have taken the recipe of an only recently-desceased-relative-by-marriage, who was still making this pudding well into her eighties. I consider it a tried and tried and tried and true recipe!

I have also bought a set of antique silver pudding charms to add to the mix, a very excited purchase on rubylane.com though I hasten to add, these were NOT an impulse buy as I have been on the lookout for a set since I bought “Nigella Christmas”.

So the fruit is soaking, charms at the ready, and off we go!

500g sultanas

375g raisins

3 tabs brandy / whisky (we had brandy in the house)

1/2 cup orange juice (I bought an orange and squeezed this fresh because orange juice is not something we keep in the house. Are you starting to get the picture?)

250g butter

250g brown sugar

rind of one orange

rind of one lemon

4 eggs

1 cup plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp bicarb soda

2 cups fresh breadcrumbs

Mix fruit, orange juice and brandy and leave to soak overnight. Mine’s been soaking for two nights so far, I don’t think it matters, when I make a fruitcake I soak it for a week.)

Put a large saucepan of water on the boil. Cream butter, sugar and ring, add eggs and stir in fruit, dry ingredients and breadcrumbs. Line pudding basin with a glad bag and place pudding mixture in this. Leave a good three inches before tying up bag very securely. Place the basin in the saucepan. Make sure to keep checking that the boiling water comes up to three quarters the height of the bowl at all times. Simmer, covered, for five hours.