The Star Ingredient
It all started here. Back in the summertime, I picked loads of wild plums and dried some of them to make my own prunes. (See the previous page for details).
I packed the prunes into a jar and immersed them in a syrup made from brandy and vanilla sugar - they've been waiting several months for this moment - the moment when I use them as the star ingredient in my Christmas Plum Pudding
Oddly, many traditional plum pudding recipes contain no plums or prunes at all (although they may taste as if they do, because many different fruits are quite similar when dried). Mine will contain plums.
The Recipe
The recipe is not complex in the making, but calls for a quite surprisingly long list of ingredients. I've taken a traditional recipe that would have yielded a monstrous 5 pound pudding and scaled it back a bit. I've also tweaked the ingredient list a little, just to stamp my own mark on it.
Ingredients:
- 150g Prunes, drained
- 75g seedless raisins
- 75g sultanas
- 75g chopped pitted dates
- 75g dried mixed peel
- 75g grated carrots
- 75g apple, peeled and finely chopped
- 75g shredded beef suet
- 150g white breadcrumbs
- 75g self-raising flour
- 50g caster sugar
- 25g black treacle
- 1 egg
- 100ml stout
- juice and grated zest from half a lemon
- half a teaspoon ground mixed spices (nutmeg, mace, cloves, cinnamon)
- pinch of salt
- half a teaspoon baking powder
- (unspecified amount) milk - for mixing
Method:
The non-liquid ingredients are to be piled together in a large bowl, mixed thoroughly (each family member taking a turn - see side column), then the stout and egg is added, along with enough milk to turn it to a soft doughy consistency
The mixture is pressed down into a suitable pudding basin (leaving room for it to rise), covered with a circle of greaseproof paper, on top of which is placed a layer of dry flour and another circle of greaseproof paper.
The top of the basin is then covered with foil or a pudding cloth, tied around with string and then steamed for six hours in a bain-marie - I intend to do this in the slow-cooker, as it would be enormously energy-intensive otherwise.
The cooked pudding can then be stored in a cool place until Christmas day - steaming it again for a couple of hours before serving with thick custard and/or cream.
That seems like a tremendous amount of cooking, but let's see how it goes.
Stir Up Sunday
The eagerly-awaited day arrived. I assembled all of the ingredients on the dining room table - quite an impressive array!
We added each ingredient to the bowl in turn, including the prunes, coarsely diced to make them mix in evenly.
Then we all took a turn at stirring, and all made our wishes (in secret of course).
A slight miscalculation with the amounts of ingredients left us with not quite enough mixture for our largest pudding basin, but too much for the next size down.
No matter though - the mixture was divided into medium and small-sized bowls - so we'll have two puddings - one for Christmas day and another one later on.
I covered the bowls with foil, then tightly tied on a piece of cloth.
I'm not sure both of these were strictly necessary, however, I didn't want the tension of the string to split the foil, and I didn't want the foil to be loose enough to allow steam inside to condense.
The larger pudding spent six hours in a bath of simmering water in the slow-cooker.
(Unfortunately, there wasn't enough room in there for both basins at once)
A quick check after cooking and all appears to be well - the mixture has cooked through to a soft, dark pudding that smells just great.
I probably shouldn't have uncovered it at all, but I couldn't resist taking a peek. Anyway, I used this as an opportunity to prick the pudding with a skewer and feed it with a couple of tablespoons of the left over brandy syrup in which the prunes had been stored.
The Proof Of the Pudding
7th December - and I just can't resist. I heated and served the smaller of my two plum puddings for dessert after Sunday lunch. Served with thick vanilla custard.
It was so moist and soft that it didn't turn out of the bowl in one piece, but it was delicious - the flavour of my home-dried prunes was a tiny bit lost in the mix, but with a little thought, the flavour could be picked out.
But a dish like this is more about the blend than the components anyway - and I'm really happy with it. I'm licking my lips, looking forward to eating the big one on Christmas day now...
