Your best recipes & tips for home-made Christmas pudding

[PassTheAfterEights]

please!

Planning to tackle next Sunday with delivery of a few Mason Cash bowls next week (what size? 20cm feels about right?)

Whose recipe is best? Mary / Nigella / Jamie / olde worlde bloggers?

How to reheat on the day - do they need to be steamed again or will a microwave do?

What else should I know?

TIA! x

I’ve got my fruit soaking in ameretto right now ready for pudding making next week! I’m a bit slow cooker obsessed right now so I’m trying out every nook and cranny’s recipe - mix it, steam in the slow cooker for 8hrs, then bung it in again for a puppet of hours while eating dinner on the big day. Should be simple...

Sylvester I don’t boil mine. I steam the pudding in a tall stock pan with boiling water at the bottom but never touching the pudding. Have to top it up regularly and tin foil lid. I just tie with string, doesn’t leak or anything. I use cooks muslin, Kilner or Kitchencraft.

MinecraftHolmes Vodka Margarine 😂😂😂

Thank you funtimes

The Rose Elliot's Complete Vegetarian Cook book from the 1980s has a recipe for traditional Christmas pudding. It is freakin' delicious. I am a crap cook, but I make it every year and it always turns out well.
It is laced with rum instead of brandy which I think is nicer.

I use a 2pint pudding bowl.

Steam it in the slow cooker.

Ping in the microwave on the day 👍

I buy them about 28th Decwmber for 50p. Have been known to pay 10p early in the New Year. They are perfect for christmas the following year.

Life's too short to stuff a mushroom iyswim

I can feel the love

I’m going to remember that, @OhTheRoses!!

Puff pastry supermarket mince pies. Lift lid add extra tsp of mince replace lid. Put in oven. Lightly dust with icing sugar with a smidge of edible glitter stirred through.

I use Nigella's Christmas book recipe, it's the only one that everyone, even those who don't normally like christmas pudding, eat and have seconds.
I cook it in the slow cooker and then reheat it in there, saves hob space and no risk of boiling dry.

I make Nigel Slater's - no nuts so my poor old mother's teeth can take it. His recipe says to steam for 3 hrs and then steam for the same amount of time again on Xmas day. I just steam the whole thing for 6 hours when i make it though and reheat in the microwave on Xmas day. It's a thing of beauty if i say so myself. Made mine a couple of weeks ago and every week or so i have a sneaky sniff to ignite a bit of xmas excitement.

I've always steamed my pudding in a saucepan but am thinking about using the slow cooker this year. I'm new to the concept of slow cooking so I could do with some pointers.
What would people recommend - high/med/low, and how many hours?

I put mine on medium and do about 10 hours or until I remember to switch it off. Have sometimes left it in overnight (when too much 🍷has been consumed) with no adverse effects. To reheat I put it in at 8 when I get up, pudding is generally at about 2 to accommodate elderly FIL and it’s perfectly reheated.

I don't have a clue about slow cookers either but I'm intrigued that it takes 10 hours. But I think I'm getting confused between that and a "pressure" cooker, which now that I think about it, sounds like something you would not make a pudding in. Sorry if I'm daft. So what is a slow cooker then? If it still takes 10 hours why would I bother buying one of these gadgets if I do the same time on the hob? Or does it stop me having to keep topping up the water levels on a hob for example?

I didn't buy one specially to do the christmas pudding. i use it for slow cooking stews etc normally.
It basically keeps the water at a very low simmer, cooking the pudding initially can take about 10 hours but if you leave it for longer it's fine. On Christmas day it saves hob space for other things and stops the kitchen filling up with steam.
Like PP I put mine in the utility room as soon as I get up and it's out of the way and I can forget about it until it's time to serve pudding regardless of what time that is.

I am currently soaking the fruit for my pud in rum. I will be making it this weekend from Nigella's Non-Conformist Christmas Pudding recipe in Feast.

Blobby I'm thinking of buying a slow cooker now especially for the purpose of pudding

The recipe I’m doing today is 8hrs on low then 3hrs or so on low on the day - pop it on before starters and it’ll be ready at the right time. The benefit to me is with a toddler and a baby, I can just leave it once set up. Once 8hrs have passed, mine goes to keep warm for up to 24hrs so if it finishes at bath time I can sort it out later without any danger or damage.

Also plan to use it for chutneys and sauces for Christmas, plus a couple of veg sides to make in advance and reheat on the day.

Thanks very much again all! We are off - recipe is a hopefully happy smush of Delia, Nigella, Mary and Fortnum's (from the ingredients list); approach is mainly Nigella and here's the fruit stewing in the booze. Planning to stir up and bowl up on Sunday. Very excited.

Q: bowls are 1l ceramic; will drop them into boiling water to cook (3h now/3h on the day) - but when Nigella says "boiling water to cover half of the bowl" is it to stay boiling hard or is a simmer enough?

@SylvesterTheCat I've bought off that apple cart, made the mistake of following a favourite blogger's recipe for "instant pot" (= pressure cooker) pineapple chicken tacos in my Crockpot slow cooker; established seven very over-excited hours later that the twain are not the same. As with standard oven/hob recipes they can all be adapted for production in any of the three but the instructions vary a lot . TBH I am still wary of the Crockpot, it can produce a decent enough fist of a stew but I don't think as good as a cast iron casserole dish in the oven and no advantage in prep work or time taken, and the liquids don't behave the same. We are without oven for some time so must make more of a friend of it, but I haven't been converted the way some have (and certainly don't trust it with the puddings). Think in retrospect the Russell Hobbs upright one might have been the better buy 🤷