Sweet red fruits and a splash of amaretto give this pudding an Italian spin. Soak the fruit the day before – and make sure your pudding basin fits your slow cooker!
Lucy, our former Food Editor creates lots of delicious meals each month. Her recipes are always packed with flavour and they're super easy too!
See more of Lucy Jessop’s recipes
Lucy Jessop
Lucy, our former Food Editor creates lots of delicious meals each month. Her recipes are always packed with flavour and they're super easy too!
See more of Lucy Jessop’s recipes
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Ingredients
200g dried mixed fruit
1 x 100g bag berries and cherries (or use 50g dried cherries, 25g dried cranberries and 25g dried blueberries)
100g natural glacé cherries, quartered
zest and juice of 1 medium orange
50ml amaretto
50ml brandy
100g dark muscovado sugar
1 tsp ground mixed spice
½ tsp ground cinnamon
a generous grating of fresh nutmeg
soft butter, to grease
2 medium eggs, lightly beaten
1 medium Bramley apple, about 225g, cored and grated
100g vegetarian suet
50g blanched almonds, roughly chopped
85g self-raising flour
65g fresh white breadcrumbs
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Make the pudding up to the end of step 5 up to 3 months ahead. Store in a cool dry place then reheat as per step 6.
Put all of the dried fruit, glacé cherries, orange zest and juice, amaretto and brandy, sugar and spices in a large bowl. Mix well to combine, cover and set aside overnight or up to a couple of days ahead.
When ready to cook, grease a 1-litre ceramic pudding basin (or Pyrex bowl) with a little butter and line the base with a circle of baking paper. Cut a square of baking paper, about 30cm, and cut the same sized piece of foil. Place the foil shiny-side down on a clean surface and lay the baking paper on top. Grease the baking paper well with butter, then, keeping both together, fold a 3cm pleat into the middle. This allows for expansion during cooking. Switch the slow cooker on to low.
Add the remaining ingredients and a pinch of salt to the soaked fruit and mix thoroughly to combine. Scrape the mixture into the prepared basin and level.
Cover the pudding with the foil and baking paper, buttered-side down, and press around the edges to enclose, while maintaining the pleat. Then secure tightly around the rim with a piece of string – tie twice around the rim of the bowl to make it secure. Trim off the surplus foil and paper, and add a string handle for easy lifting, if your pudding basin has a ridged lip.
Sit the basin inside the slow cooker. Boil the kettle and pour water around the pudding until it comes halfway up. Place the slow-cooker lid on top; it needs to be fully closed, with no gaps. Cook for 10 hours. Remove from the slow cooker and leave to cool completely. Then remove the paper and foil and replace with fresh wrappings, as before, ready for when you want to re-steam and serve. Store in a cool dark place, or the fridge.
On the day you want to serve the pudding, cook in the slow cooker as before, but for 4 hours on the low setting, until piping hot.
We like to serve this with whipped cream spiked with a few tablespoons of amaretto, to taste.
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.
After you have steamed and cooled your pudding, replace the foil with a freshly buttered piece to keep it moist and store in a cool, dark place, or the fridge, until you are ready to reheat it on Christmas day.
In fact, they just get better with age. Many of my customers like to buy their pudding a year in advance and let it continue to mature. If you love an aged pudding, you might want to consider a pudding from our vintage range. These puddings have been allowed to mature for an additional year.
You can use any other high alcohol liquor that you have to hand for flaming the pudding (though not a fortified wine, such as port) and cognac/brandy and whisky are often traditional choices. Port could be used for soaking the fruits for the pudding but make sure it is a sweet variety of port.
Can you over-steam a Christmas pudding? While the pudding won't dry out if it's steamed for too long, some of the ingredients inside may be spoiled by being overcooked.
Ideally we would suggest that when the pudding is made it is steamed for 8 hours (the combined time of the first and second steamings) as the steaming is important for the flavour of the pudding. The pudding can then be microwaved to reheat it on Christmas Day.
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. The best tool for checking your Christmas pudding is perfectly cooked is an instant-read food thermometer like the Thermapen ONE.
Some Christmas puddings, made with dried fruit in the traditional way, are fine to be eaten as much as two years after they were made. "Bear in mind if the pudding is alcohol-free, of course, it will last a good while with the sugar content, but it will not last as long without alcohol to preserve it," stresses Juliet.
It's best not to. Suet is a very hard fat, which melts slowly through a mixture during the cooking, whereas butter melts very easily and quickly through a mixture. They are different types of fats and shouldn't be substituted for each other.
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.
Brandy is also traditionally poured over the pudding and set alight. The flaming brandy is said to represent the passion of Christ. Christmas puddings were traditionally boiled in a “pudding cloth”, although today are usually steamed in a bowl.
To serve, the pudding is reheated by steaming once more, and may be dressed with warm brandy which is set alight. It can be eaten with hard sauce (usually brandy butter or rum butter), cream, lemon cream, ice cream, custard, or sweetened béchamel, and is sometimes sprinkled with caster sugar.
Although the pud is undoubtedly the star, all that rich, fruity filling needs a dollop of something creamy and cool to serve alongside. Pour over double cream, spoon on thick clotted cream or serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a quick win, or whip up your own boozy brandy butter for ultimate indulgence.
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Prep time: 30 mins
