Welcome to day six of:
The 12 Days of Christmas
Food and Romance
Blogging Extravaganza!
Halfway through! Is your Christmas shopping all done?? No, mine either. But on to happier topics...
My guest today is the absolutely awesome author and (I'm very proud to say) my SuperRomance stablemate,
Sarah Mayberry! Sarah's heartwarming (and quite spicy) romances are the stuff of legend and like so many of my wonderful Extravaganza guests, her books are well-represented on my shelves. Sarah has not only brought us a wonderful tale about a family heirloom Christmas pudding, she's even provided the recipe! With all this recipe goodness we're serving up for TDoCFaRBE, there's no excuse not to be straight into the Christmas baking this year...
The
Legend of Nana's Christmas Pudding
by Sarah Mayberry
Before
I start waxing poetic about my Nan's pudd, a big thanks to Emmie for inviting
me to blog about something so close to my heart (and stomach). With Christmas
just days away, I am about to launch into the marathon that is my Day of
Pudding Boiling (you'll see why it's a marathon in a moment) so this topic is
top of my mind right now.
The
legend of my grandmother's Christmas pudding is a bit like Emmie's fruit cake
story in that until they've eaten some of my Nan's pudd, many people don't
realise they even like plum pudding. In fact, some people might even consider
themselves avowed plum pudding haters (poor, deprived fools!). Usually this is
because they hate sultanas or currants or some other variety of dried fruit. I
must admit, if I was held at gunpoint with bright lights trained on me, I
might also confess to not being the world's greatest sultana lover,
too. But all such considerations go out the window when faced with a bowl
full of Nan's goodness. There's something about the boiling process or perhaps
it's the sheer simplicity of this recipe that results in a really lovely, rich
pudding that isn't overly dried-fruity, even though it's chockas with the
stuff.
Put
simply (and, of course, completely objectively) it is The Best Thing Eva.
There's no fancy stuff in this recipe - no suet, or glace anything, or nuts or
anything vaguely spicy. It's just dried fruit, brandy, eggs, butter, flour and
golden syrup. And when it's been boiled for seven hours (six when you make it,
one on the day of serving) it's moist and delicious and well worth the
"I'm so full I'm going to be sick" feeling that is the inevitable end
result of Christmas feasting for so many of us.
I
have no idea where this recipe comes from, but for as long back as I can
remember, Christmas day at my maternal grandmother's house was always capped
off by Nan unwrapping the pudding, drowning it in brandy sauce and handing it
out to a table full of expectant relatives. Usually the pudding had been
hanging in her pantry for a few months, maturing to perfection. Even as a child
I knew to savor it, because unlike a traditional roast dinner, I knew I was
only getting this pudding once a year. Needless to say, there was always
a queue for seconds, and the huge saucepan of brandy sauce never went the
distance no matter how much Nan made.
At a
certain point Nan got too old to go through all the fuss of pudding making, so
she passed the baton onto my sister, both my mother and my aunt having declared
themselves not interested enough in cooking to master the art of the pudding.
Once I saw that my sister could replicate my Nan's success, I got in on the
act, too, and introduced my husband's family to the joy's of Nan's pudding.
Now, every year my sister and I reserve a day to make our pudding. For that
day, we are tied to the kitchen, watching our boiling pudding, adding water to
the pot, generally fussing around this precious thing until its six hours in
the hot seat are up.
Unlike
Nan, I have never tried to make my pudding early and leave it hanging for
months to deepen the flavors, or whatever that's about. My sister lost a whole
pudding to mold one year, and we both agreed it was too painful a process to
risk that kind of attrition. So now we boil our puddings a week or two before
Christmas and store them in the fridge. A little less romantic than Nan's way
of doing things, I know, but very practical. We have also freelanced from Nan's
recipe a little by increasing the amount of brandy we use to soak the fruit.
Nan's recipe included only a few tablespoons of the good stuff. My sister and I
both decided this was barely enough to dampen the fruit! So we glug a decent
amount of brandy over the fruit so that it's got plenty of liquid to soak up
and rehydrate with. The recipe below has been adjusted to allow for our
heavy-handedness, so feel free to tweak to suit your own tastes.
So,
without further ado, here is Nan's recipe:
Nan Wade's Christmas Pudding
250g currants 5
eggs
250g raisins 1 tlbsp golden syrup
250g sultanas 1
tsp carb soda
125g dates 250
ml brandy
250g brown sugar 60cm
x 60cm unbleached calico, available from most fabric retailers
375g sifted plain flour kitchen
string
250g butter
Cut up raisins and dates so that all
pieces are of an even size, about the size of a sultana.
Mix all the dried fruits together.
- Pour brandy over fruit, mix well and
let soak at least overnight. ( sometimes I let it sit 3 or 4 days as I build up
to the big 6 hour boiling day)
- Cream butter and sugar together
until light and fluffy, add eggs one at a time beating well after each
addition.
- Add the soaked fruit & golden
syrup , mix well.
- Add the flour and carb soda. Fold
dry ingredients in.
- Boil the pudding cloth. Sift
flour over the surface of the pudding cloth to give the pudding a skin.
- Place ingredients in the centre of
the cloth and tie up with kitchen string, looping it tightly around the
"neck" of the pudding several times, nice and tight. Place a
saucer on the bottom of a very large stock pot and bring water to the boil.
(This stops the pudding from "catching" on the bottom of the pot.)
Put the pudding into the rapidly boiling water on top of the saucer, and put
the lid on immediately. The pudding will float, but don't worry about
that. I usually use water up to about the string line. Boil the pudding
rapidly for 6 hours. The water must never go off the boil, so replenish
from a boiled kettle if necessary, being careful not to pour water directly over
the tied neck of the pudding, as it can get a bit soggy there if water
seeps in.
- At the end of the cooking time, lift
the pudding from the water and store in the fridge until the day of serving. On
the day of serving, boil the pudding for a further hour to heat it. To serve,
cut the string and peel the cloth away from the pudding. Cut into wedges and
serve with brandy sauce and vanilla ice-cream.
The brandy sauce we make to
accompany this is basically a sweetened white sauce with brandy added - milk
thickened with cornflour, sweetened with sugar, and the brandy added to
taste.
If you are tempted to give this a
try, I promise you you won't be disappointed - it comes out a gorgeous
golden-syrupy color and tastes so rich and delicious. I cannot wait till
Christmas day now that I've written this all up - yummm! Sadly, I only have the
one picture of my pudding from last year. This year I will take many more
so I can show it off with pictures as well as words next time anyone is foolish
enough to ask about my Nan's pudding.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
I'm sure Sarah won't mind me book-ending her post with a little reminder about Random Acts. A
s part of TDoCFaRBE I'm encouraging you all to undertake a Random Act of Kindness throughout the festive season.
The latest hint from Random Acts is a lovely one -- why not give someone the gift of your time and attention and make a visit to your local nursing home or to an elderly neighbour?
Or you can simply send Random Acts a donation and wear a smile all day.
