Christmas Pudding Recipes (2024)

FAQs

Can I use butter instead of suet in Christmas pudding? ›

If you or someone in your family is a vegetarian and doesn't want to eat suet, look for a recipe that uses butter or margarine instead, such as this recipe for individual Christmas puddings.

Brandy works wonderfully well and we've added more punch by infusing it with fantastically festive flavourings.

If water has entered the wrapped pudding basin then it is likely that the pan was boiling a little too hard, and may also have been too full of water, meaning the water came up and over the top of the pudding basin which makes it easier for water to enter.

We would also mention that after the first steaming the pudding may look a little lighter in colour than you may expect. On the second steaming the pudding will darken in colour. As it re-heats it will also become slightly softer in texture and should be easy to cut once it has been turned out from its basin.

If you can't find suet or you just don't want to use it, try shortening instead. One of the advantages of using vegetable shortening is that it is suitable for vegetarian dishes. Before using it, freeze the shortening until it is very firm.

4. Vegetable shortening: Vegetable shortening has a mild flavor like suet and hardens in the refrigerator, making it simple to shred and add to foods that call for shredded suet. Shortening consists of sunflower oil, palm oil, and wheat flour, which create a similar, crumbly texture to suet.

Conclusion: Christmas puddings contain ethanol that does not all evaporate during the cooking process. However, the rise in BAC after ingestion of a typical slice of Christmas pudding was negligible and unlikely to affect work performance or safety or impair a health care worker's ability to make complex decisions.

Though in older times the choice was more to do with economy, breadcrumbs give the pudding a much lighter texture. And again, use just enough flour to hold the mixture gently together. Not too many eggs, and more egg yolk that white if you can.

Our answer. Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding (from Christmas and on the Nigella website) can be made up to 6 weeks ahead of Christmas. Traditionally puddings are made on Stir Up Sunday, which is the Sunday before the start of Advent and this year it is on 22nd November 2015.

According to experts, the secret to Christmas pudding perfection is to heat it to precisely 71 °C. If it gets hotter than 89 °C, the sugars within the fruits in the pudding start to caramelise. So no matter how luxurious its ingredients are, your precious pud will taste bitter.

Can you cook a Christmas pudding in a Pyrex bowl? ›

As for all puddings, it should be stored in a cool, dry place until Christmas Day. For the US our preference would be to use Pyrex mixing bowls for steaming Christmas puddings.

Completely fine. I always buy my Christmas puddings in the January sales! I think we ate one that was 8 years out of date once. Slightly shrivelled but soon plumped up again with lashings of Brandy!

Here's a general guideline: Room Temperature: It's safe to store Christmas pudding at room temperature for a few days, but it's not recommended for long-term storage. Refrigerator: In the fridge, Christmas pudding can last for up to a week while maintaining its quality.

History of Figgy Pudding

Rather than creamy puddings and custards, which Southern cooks are familiar with, this Christmas pudding dates back to medieval England and is a steamed cake full of spices, raisins, and currants soaked in brandy. If it contains figs, it is called a figgy pudding.

Follow your recipe for the steaming times of your pudding, but if you do need to check then you can insert a skewer through the foil and parchment to check that it comes out clean. Simply patch up the hole with more foil if your pudding needs more time to steam.

It is possible to make Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding using vegetable shortening (such as Crisco, Trex, Flora White, Cookeen or Copha) instead of suet (which is made from beef fat). You use exactly the same quantity in vegetable shortening but it needs to be coarsely grated before you use it.

Mix the almonds, apples, candied peel, nutmeg, raisins, flour, breadcrumbs, light muscovado sugar, eggs and 2 tbsp brandy or cognac in a large bowl. Holding the butter in its wrapper, grate a quarter of it into the bowl, then stir everything together.

It's role is to enrich and lubricate mixtures, producing a good crust in steamed suet puddings. Suet is the compacted, flaky and fairly hom*ogenous fat that is found around animals' kidneys, protecting them from damage.

Both butter and cream function very similarly in pudding. They are both added for their fat.