Christmas Pudding and Christmas Cake.

mikael3 · Dec 6, 2016

If you haven’t made yours yet, you better get cracking. They’ve got to age at least a couple of weeks.

My family insists on Trifle as the Christmas dessert, but some years I also make a Christmas Pudding, and some years I make a Christmas Cake for Twelfth Night (which makes it technically a Twelfth Cake).

For my pudding, I use Eliza Acton’s simple and delicious recipe from 1845, which she titles ‘The Author’s Christmas Pudding’. It has a lot less in it than modern recipes. If you don’t have good peel, substitute chopped orange marmalade; it is much closer to the taste of true peel that what appears on grocery shelves.

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3 oz breadcrumbs

3 oz flour

5 oz sugar

½ tsp mixed spice

⅛ tsp salt

6 oz grated suet

6 oz raisins

6 oz currants

4 oz minced apple

2 oz candied peel, chopped





3 oz brandy

3 eggs

Mix it all up and set it in the fridge overnight. Next day, pack it in the basin in the usual way and steam it for 5 hours.

mikael3 · Dec 6, 2016

If you’re really adventurous, you can boil the pudding in a cloth. I’ve done that only twice, and it was kind of messy, but not difficult. I loved the look of the ‘cannon ball’ pudding, and both times I got the wonderful ‘crust’ that the boiled puddings are famous for.<!-- [if gte mso 9]><xml>
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[this post was last edited: 12/6/2016-11:45]

mikael3 · Dec 6, 2016

One more thing. I always use Muscat raisins for my Christmas baking. They are so much better than seedless raisins, all of which are from the same grape, no matter how they’re labeled: Sultanas, Thompson seedless, or simply seedless raisins. The green ones are different only in how they are dried. (Of course, I’m sure there are exceptions, but this is generally true in commercial raisin production.)

Muscats are annoying beyond belief when you have to seed them yourself; I’ve done it many times. But Sun-Maid sells them de-seeded this time of year. They come as a clumped-up mess, but they quickly separate into raisins when you splash them with a little brandy.

[this post was last edited: 12/6/2016-11:45]

Christmas Pudding and Christmas Cake.

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