So…hands up those of you who like Christmas pudding?! Not many eh…? I don’t really blame you. Or at least the 20 year-old (and younger) version of me wouldn’t have.
Seriously…I don’t know a single young person/child who likes Christmas Pudding. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it’s essentially boiled fruitcake; because that sounds freakin’ fabulous…(Can you hear the sarcasm?) Or, it could have something to do with the fact that once made, you can ACTUALLY keep it in your fridge for a year, and not die if you eat it…yum! (She says facetiously.) OR, it could have something to do with the fact that it’s a brown mushy, fairly shapeless supposedly-edible ‘dessert’ with NO chocolate in it. (I’m still trying to figure out how it gets brown…)
Needless to say, as a kid, it just doesn’t look appetizing when there are other things on the table like Mardi Gras torte (an unbelievably delicious, crustless chocolate cheese cake thing with baked brown-sugar meringue layers….le droooool…)!!!!
(I’m doing a stellar job selling this whole Christmas Pudding thing, aren’t I? Hold tight. It gets better…)
The fact is, that as a kid, my Gramma always offered my brother and I Christmas Pudding after her Uh-mazing Boxing Day dinner. We, however, would just look at her with this blank stare trying to figure out how not to be rude but tell her to pass on the Mardi Gras Torte (or cherry pie).
After the bro and I would hoover our Torte/pie, there would be a good 10 minutes of satiated silence afforded to the table. This allowed us to watch ALL the elders (except Uncle Earl who would have braved ice storms, blizzards, and polar bears to inhale my Gramma’s cherry pie) eat this sopping brown raisin-infested gook.
Watching my Dad eat Christmas Pudding is like watching a 4 year old eat a 6-layer chocolate cake. Holding a spoon in his fist, waiting for his bowl of pudding to touch down on his place mat, he gets this huge grin across his face, his eyes squint shut in glee, and his ears literally perk up with excitement…for boiled raisins. As a kid/teen, I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand what the fuss was about.
I didn’t actually get up the guts to taste Christmas Pudding until I was well into my 20s. My Gramma was getting older, and I realized that I may not have many more years to soak in ALL of the Christmas traditions I had been raised in.
So…one Christmas, I said that I would like to taste the Christmas Pudding. Silence echoed around the table. In the amazingly non-judgmental way that she always had about her, my Gramma scooped a small portion on a plate for me. She asked if I wanted the Lemon or Brown sugar sauce with it. I responded, “Both, please”. More silence followed as I took my first bite…
…I could not believe what I had been missing all those freakin’ years! I hate almost every single ingredient that goes into Christmas pudding. (Seriously, apart from this particular context, raisins and glacéed cherries should be reserved for international war criminals), but somehow, when put together with flour, brandy, currants, and when drenched in caramel/brown sugar sauce, you forget that you’re eating a cacophony of sunburnt and glucose-drowned fruit. Instead, you instantly fall in love with this deeply rich tart-yet-sweet cake-like dessert thing.
When my Gramma died a few years ago, she unfortunately took her pudding, and lemon and brown sugar sauce recipes with her. But she left her pudding bowl. This pudding bowl is amazing. (I will share pictures over Christmas when I’m home). It has been in our family for generations. You can tell because the instructions on how to use it include one suggesting that you seal the hole in the middle with some of the dough from the bread you were assumed to be making anyway. Besides a select group of people (including myself), who makes their own bread these days? It also helps explain the hardest part of the whole pudding-making process…getting the freakin’ bowl in a larger pot of boiling water without burning yourself! The whole thing just oozes tradition and memories.
For that first Christmas after my Gramma died, Mum, being the awesome chef that she is, found a recipe that she knew would be a close second to Gramma’s (though the sauces just aren’t the same. Sorry Mamma). That first Christmas was pretty much the hardest Christmas I’ve ever had. The same goes for the whole family.
For my entire life, our Christmas celebrations were like an onion of joy. We would have our immediate family Christmas in TO on Christmas morning before packing ourselves up to drive to Hamilton and have Christmas 2.0 in my Gramma’s basement with my aunt and uncle on Boxing Day. She would then make a huge dinner, and invite long-time family friends over where she would serve this pudding. She would walk out of the kitchen with the pudding bowl, drawing more reverence from the folks at the table than any kid’s birthday cake ever has. That pudding was the culmination of Christmas for our family.
So, when Mum walked out of our kitchen that first Christmas we had to start new traditions, the same reverence was there; albeit pretty bittersweet. Mum could have probably found a horrible Christmas Pudding recipe (theoretically), and it would have tasted the same to all of us as we remembered my Gramma’s pudding. We may have a few new family traditions now, but this one will remain firmly in our Christmas tradition box; right inside that bowl.
It is for that reason, that I have adapted my Mamma’s version of this boiled raisin-infested fruitcake to kick off my Christmas recipe season! (I promise the others won’t be an emotional rollercoaster!) Thankfully, the recipe that my Mum chose was, per usual, FABULOUS!! The suet, though requiring a visit to an actual butcher, makes ALL the difference.
The great thing is that, apart from the horrible getting-the-bowl-in-the-boiling-water-without-searing-appendages-off thing, it’s REALLY easy to make (and I’ve come up with an ingenious hack for you guys to make that boiling-appendages-thing easier too)! I know the recipe below is long and scary looking, but I swear that if you can stir a spoon, and you use the hack, the hardest part about the recipe is finding 7-8 hours to be in your home while the pudding happily steams on your stove. (That’s what weekends are for…right?)
And as I said above, the recipe says that you can keep this pudding for a YEAR in your fridge and still be able to eat it. (I seriously wonder if that’s because the extensive steaming has removed any potential bacteria and mould spores that would otherwise spoil the food…It’s like a Christmas twinkie! That may not be a selling point…oh well).
Happily, Christmas Pudding has never lasted that long in our house, so I can’t say that I’ve ever been able to test that theory. And this recipe is SO good, it probably won’t last that long in your fridge either.
Now here is the tricky part…technically you’re supposed to let this little guy sit in your fridge for 3 weeks before eating it. We have just passed the 3-week mark on the Christmas countdown (stupid school not giving me enough time to blog), so if you guys are looking to make a Christmas Pudding this year, I would hup-to and make this guy this weekend.
If you’re still on the fence, I tasted it after a week of sitting in the fridge, and it was delicious. This makes me think that this pudding follows the ‘best 3 weeks later, but pretty freakin’ good before’ rule. (Yea. I’ve just made that a rule). Either way, what I’m trying to convey to you, is that you should make this thing! Who knows, it may just become a new tradition in your household as well!
Paleo-ish Christmas Pudding and Caramel Sauce
Blow those Christmas Pudding lovers away at your holiday party (and convert the haters) with this uh-mazing Christmas Pudding swimming in Caramel Sauce!
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 10 hours
- Total Time: 10 hours 15 minutes
- Yield: 8-12 servings 1x
Ingredients
Pudding
- 3/4 cup dried currants
- 1 cup golden raisins
- 1 cup sultana or Thomson raisins
- 6 tbsp assorted candied fruit peel
- 6 tbsp glacéed cherries, finely chopped
- 1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
- 1 small apple, peeled, quartered, and coarsely chopped (like a Macintosh)
- 1 small carrot, peeled, and coarsely chopped
- 1 tbsp grated orange peel
- 1 tsp grated lemon peel
- 1/4 pound chopped beef suet
- 2/3 cup arrowroot starch
- 1/2 cup oat flour
- 1 tsp xantham gum
- 2 cups fresh soft breadcrumbs, using whatever kind of bread you’ve got on hand, gluten-free or otherwise.
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup coconut or canola oil
- 1/2 cup brandy
- 1/8 cup orange juice
- 1/8 cup lemon juice
- Icing sugar (optional)
Caramel Sauce
- 2 cups sugar
- 1/2 cups water
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1 cup full-fat canned coconut milk
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
- 3 tbsp lard
Instructions
To make the pudding:
- In a large bowl, combine the dried fruit, walnuts, apple, carrot, orange, lemon peel, and beef suet.
- Toss loosely with a spoon.
- Stir in the flours, breadcrumbs, brown sugar, allspice, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, mix the coconut oil, brandy, and orange and lemon juice.
- Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry, and stir until you have a uniformly thick paste.
- Drape a damp towel over the mixing bowl, and refrigerate for at least 12 hours. If you need to, put the pudding in a smaller bowl so that it fits in your fridge.
The Next Day:
- Grease a 6-8″ ceramic soufflé, deep casserole dish, or pudding bowl if you have one. (I used spray coconut oil). Make sure you choose a dish that you can fit a bread plate over or one which comes with a lid.
- Put a large pot on the stove under medium heat. When choosing a pot, obviously choose one that your dish can fit in. If you’re choosing a regular soup pot, place a round trivet/cooling rack in the bottom of the pot. Cover the trivet with a washcloth and fill it with enough water that it reaches about half-way up your dish. What’s even better is if you have one of those fabulous double-boiler pasta pots! If you have one of those, put water in the bottom, and put the washcloth over the bottom of the inner liner.
- While waiting for your water to boil, prep your pudding bowl.
- Add the pudding to the greased dish, and put the lid/bread plate over it. Re-dampen the towel, and place it over the plate, making sure the edges cover the rim on all sides by about an inch.
- Tie a string around the rim, securing the towel to the dish. If the edges of the towel fall down to the counter, you can fold them back over the string on top of the bread plate, and tie them together with an elastic. Your pudding bowl will look like it has a man-bun.
- Now…time for the hack! (It’s really not rocket science, but it wasn’t in the instructions of the recipe I adapted, so I had to learn the hard way). Wrap your pudding bowl, like you would wrap a present with ribbon. (i.e. start pulling a LONG piece of string from your spool and put your pudding dish on top of the middle of it. Wrap it up and over the dish, bringing it back around to your start point. Wrap it around the start point once, and bring the string back up and around the dish at a 90 degree angle so that you form an ‘X’ surrounding the dish. Cut the string, and tie it on top with the other loose end.) That way, you can have a handle to pull your pudding out of the pot!
- Once the water has boiled, reduce the heat to a simmer, and put your wrapped up pudding in the pot.
- Steam for 7-8 hours. Make sure you check the water levels every couple of hours, adding water as is needed.
- To make sure I didn’t spill water all over the top of the pudding dish, I put a funnel to one side of the dish, and poured water to the bottom of the pot that way!
- When the pudding is done boiling, remove from the water, and let it cool to room temperature.
- Cover the pudding with saran wrap and refrigerate it for 3 weeks (but like I said, I tasted this thing after a week and it was delicious).
Serving the Pudding
- When you’re ready to serve this baby, get your pot setup out again, and steam the pudding for ~ 2 hours.
- If you want to serve the pudding on a plate rather than from the dish itself, run a paring knife around the edge of the pudding, place your serving plate on top, and flip quickly.
- Dust the plate with icing sugar if you want to jazz it up.
- Any leftover pudding (if there is some) can legit be stored in your fridge for up to a year! You can also store it in the freezer.
Making the Caramel Sauce
- While you’re waiting for the pudding to re-steam/heat, combine your sugar, water, and lemon juice in a sauce pan.
- Bring to a rolling boil, until the syrup reaches a deep, reddish-brown caramel colour. This takes about 15 minutes. Swirl the pan on the stove element every now and again to make sure the sugar caramelizes evenly.
- While you’re waiting for the syrup to caramelize, get your coconut milk, coconut oil, and lard ready.
- When the caramel has reached the colour you want, remove it from the heat, and add your remaining ingredients. Watch out for steam!
- Stir with a fork or a whisk until combined, and pour into your caramel serving dish (i.e. a gravy boat or a bowl).
- The caramel will separate a bit as it cools. Just stir it every now and again with a spoon before drizzling it over your pudding.
- Any leftover caramel can be stored in your fridge for a couple of weeks (if it lasts that long!)
Enjoy!!
Now…this recipe is Paleo-ish in my mind because brandy is a necessary ingredient, as is the small amount of bread crumbs. You could make it more Paleo by subbing the brown sugar for coconut sugar and subbing the oat flour for almond flour (if you can eat it. Unfortunately, I cannot, so oat flour it is for me!) I would highly recommend NOT using coconut flour as it would make the pudding too dry.
The accompanying caramel sauce likewise has to be made with sugar, but I’ve otherwise adapted it to be dairy-free/Paleo-ish.
Finally, if you’re like me and are in the 100% culinary-leper camp, you may find it difficult to find bread that you can eat. I’ve developed a bread recipe for myself, but I haven’t had the chance to share it yet. That’s what I used to make this thing.
If there are no breads that you can eat, I would suggest maybe using 1 1/2 cups of cooked millet (if you can eat that) as your substitute, and upping the arrowroot and/or oat flour mix by a couple of tablespoons. This recipe is pretty indestructible. Play around with the ingredients that you know you can eat and think about finding one that has a bit of spring to it, and some moisture, but not too much. If you need a sounding board on what subs might or might not work, reach out folks! I would be more than happy to help!
Ok…that’s it for me this week! I’m heading into the maelstrom of exams that I’ve been not-so-subtly hinting at for the past few weeks, so I can’t promise when I’ll get my next post up. Rest assured, it will be up before Christmas. Why? Because, it’s another traditional Christmas recipe in our family (that I’ve adapted to be culinary-leper friendly, of course)! It’s also the recipe for pretty much the best freakin’ Christmas cookies on the planet!!! You want to stay tuned for those!!!
Per usual, if you have any questions or would like to leave a comment, please feel free to do so below, or via my contact page.
Ciao for now folks!
