Jonathan Spencer's Tales of Ordinary Wisdom

Jonathan’s Recipe for Christmas Pudding

This is a great recipe thats run in my family for many years and makes a fantastic pudding.  I am a great beleiver in Pressure Cookers and use this to steam my pudding as it is quicker….give it a try and see what you think.  I use a tower pressure cooker but used to have a prestige, I have found them both good value and easy to use.  The recipe uses old fashioned pounds and ounces and healthy things like wholewheat flour, this year I even used spelt flour in my pudding mixture…which worked fine. (UK Imperial Measure)….

The  Ingredients for Jonathan Spencer’s Christmas Pudding

4oz Fine wholemeal breadcrumbs

2oz of plain wholemeal flour

4oz of vegetable suet

4oz Sugar

1ib of mixed dried fruit(you can use prunes and figs finely chopped as well as raisins sultanas and currants)

I tablespoon of black treacle or molasses

4oz mixed peel

4oz of blanched almonds

1 small grated carrot

1 small grated apple

the grated rind and juice of one lemon

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of  mixed spice

1/2 teaspoon of grated nutmeg

1 gill ( a quarter of a pint)of ale, beer, stout, or whiskey…….I prefer to add part stout and part whiskey

The METHOD:

Mix all the ingredients together stirring thoroughly until well blended in a large mixing bowl, then place into greased baisins.  Cover carefully with greseproof paper, foil to make a waterproof seal (best you can) each pudding needs to steam for 8 hours or 2 hours in a pressure cooker (1/2 hour at no pressure then 1.5 hours at full pressure)

as stated above you need to make sure each pudding bowl is water tight, in the old days they put a layer of greaseproof on top of the pudding and then covered this with a thick mixture of flour and water and then tied a pudding cloth round it (but I just uses greaseproof paper and foil.

After each steaming remove the foil or cloth etc and replace with fresh dry paper and foil.

If you are interested in more christmas recipes, I have them all…candied peel, marzipan, mincemeat (for mince pies), peppermint creams and a perfect way to cook the turkey.

if you use my recipe and it works for you please either use the comment button underneath the article or the forum button at the top of the page to tell me how you got on.

“Plum Pudding Pie: A Cook’s Book of Christmas (Cooks Books)” (Murdoch Books)