A tale of 2 christmas puddings continued...........

So the second pudding I made was from Nigella Lawsons How to be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the art of Comfort Cooking. It uses suet which I know some people don't like but I got Atora Light which has 25% less fat and is vegetable suet to boot, the thoughts of beef suet would put me off eating something I think.

So here's what you need for a 1 1/2 litre pudding bowl

• 100g currants
• 100g mixed raisins and sultanas
• 50g natural coloured glace cherries
• 50g dried blueberries (I couldn't find these anywhere so used dated instead)
• 50g prunes (I don't really like prunes so used fried apricots)
  
• 50g marron glace pieces (candied chestnuts for those of you who don't know and once again I couldn't find these so I used finely chopped almonds)
• 60g candied peel
• 150ml rum
• 90g self raising flour
• 125g white breadcrumbs (I actually used wholemeal bread as I don't like white)
• 150 shredded suet (Atora)
• 1 medium cooking apple, 120g grated
• 150g dark brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice (once again I played around with the spices and used 1/2 tsp cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger)
• pinch of salt
• 3 lrg eggs (I only has 2 eggs left at this stage so used the juice of half an orange)
• zest of 1 orange

This mixture is way darker than my first pudding and smelled lovely, more christmassy overall I think.

I find puddings very easy to makem throw everything together and off you go. Nigella added cleaned £1 coins but I didn't bother, and you never know euros might melt if they're heated too much ;-)

You'll need to soak the fruit in the rum overnight and the next day

• Mix all the dry ingredients together and then add to the fruit.
  
• Butter the pudding basin and put the mixture into it
• Cover the basin with a layer of buttered greaseproof paper and then 2 layers of tin foil and tie with string around the edge.
• Boil or steam the pudding for 3 hours making sure the water doesn't boil dry.

To reheat at Christmas boil/steam again for 3 hours.

A tale of 2 christmas puddings

So this year I ended up making 2 Christmas puddings, 1 because my mother won't eat anything with suet in it and 2 because my husband would be very upset if my mam got one made for her and none made for him.

I have used a recipe I got from the forums on jamieoliver.com and is supposed to be Jamie's nans recipe, it was also in delicious magazine a few years back but I don't have that copy so this is from the Jamie site.

So you'll need

• 1 teaspoon softened butter, for greasing
• 1 large egg (I used 1 medium and an extra yolk)
  
• 150ml of milk
• 400g dried sultanas and raisins
• 100g dried cherries and cranberries (I couldn't find cranberries so I used dried apricots)
• 125 dates,chopped up
• 125g butter
  
• 125g plain flour
• 125g golden caster sugar
• 125g breadcrumbs
• 2 tablespoons of brandy
• a pinch of salt
• zest of 1 orange
• 3 pieces stem ginger, finely chopped (I couldn't find this anywhere so I left it out)
  
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger

Now I thought that just ginger wasn't really enough spice (and as I couldn't find the stem ginger) to add to a pudding I improvised slightly and after the 1 tsp of ginger added 1/2 tsps of nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice.

Rub 1.5 litre pudding bowl with butter.
In a separate bowl beat the egg and milk together and put to one side.
In another bowl mix all the other ingredients together.
Pour the egg and milk mixture into this bowl and stir or mix with your hands until everything is combined.
Spoon this mixture into the greased pudding bowl and cover with a layer of buttered grease proof paper followed by a double layer of aluminium foil.
Tie these layers in place around the rim of the bowl using a piece of string.
Place the pudding bowl in a large saucespon and put cold water in the pan until it comes half way up the side of the bowl.
Bring the water to the boil then cover with a lid and simmer for 3 hours.

I haven't tried this pudding yet, but it's lighted than your normal christmas pudding, I hope to god it's nice but if not plenty of brandy butter or cream and we'll be set. As with the cake I'll update as soon as I know how it goes.