Pudding Baking

Best-Ever Christmas Pudding

Christmas Day wouldn't be the same without Christmas Pudding, a rich, stodgy pud made with apples, dark sugar, candied peel and mixed spice. For a true celebration, make sure you flame it by soaking it in brandy! Serve with a dollop of brandy cream or homemade custard

20 minutes prep, 8 hours cook

Serves 2 puddings

Ingredients

50g blanched almonds

1 large Bramley apple

300g prunes

100g candied peel

400g raisins

400g currants

140g plain flour

100g fresh breadcrumbs

100g soft dark brown sugar

½ nutmeg, grated

1 tbsp mixed spice

3 large eggs

2 tablespoons brandy or Cognac, plus extra for flaming

250g shredded suet (or grated frozen vegetable shortening)

Unsalted butter, softened, for greasing

Method

Start by preparing the fruits and nuts for the pudding. Roughly chop the whole almonds into coarse nibs. Peel and chop the apple into 5-mm cubes (they don’t need to be perfect, but we like the fruits to be roughly the same size). Roughly chop the prunes to the same size.

If your mixed peel is in strips, finely chop it – there’s no need to chop if it is already finely diced.

Put all the ingredients except the suet into a large mixing bowl. Stir once or twice to roughly combine. Add the suet to the bowl in thirds, stirring well between each addition. Stir for a few minutes until you can see the suet is evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

Grease two 1.2 litre pudding moulds with softened butter and line the bottom of each with a circle of baking paper. Fill the moulds generously with the pudding mixture, packing it in tightly.

Cover the tops of each mould with another circle of baking paper slightly larger than the mould – you need enough excess paper to fold around the top of each mould and secure with string. You can cover the tops of each pudding with another large circle of kitchen foil and secure with string or create a foil ‘parcel’ around the entire mould.

Place your puddings inside a large saucepan with a lid. Fill the pan with enough water to reach three-quarters of the way up the sides of the moulds. Steam your puddings on a medium-low heat for 8 hours. You may need to top up the water occasionally.

Remove the pan from the heat, carefully remove the puddings and leave them to cool overnight.

When the puddings are cold, remove the foil and paper layers. Wrap the puddings in a new layer of baking paper and kitchen foil and secure with string. Store in a cool, dry place until you are ready to serve.

To serve, boil or steam each pudding for 1 hour and turn out onto a plate. You can, if you like, flame the pudding with a tablespoon of rum or brandy.