Today is Stir-up Sunday, the traditional day to make your Christmas pudding! For many, this wooden spooned affair marks the beginning of the festive season and, as we sure do like an excuse to get festive, we decided we would don our Christmas jumpers and get mixing.
Having scoured the internet for the perfect pudding recipe, we didn’t find one that exactly worked for us, despite the fact that they are all essentially the same. Awkward, us? Eventually we decided to adapt Delia Smith’s tried and tested recipe (which can be found here). We had a lot of the ingredients, such as the flour, sugar and spices already and we substituted some of Delia’s items for things we had to hand rather than spend the extra money. A quick trip to Sainsbury’s to stock up on the extras and we were ready to go!
Ingredients
4oz (110g) of shredded suet
2oz (50g) of self-raising flour (sifted)
4oz (110g) of white breadcrumbs (we just shredded up sliced bread)
8oz (225g) of brown sugar (we used muscovado)
1tsp of cinnamon
1tstp of nutmeg
1tsp of ginger
1tsp of mixed spice
200g of sultanas
100g of chopped glacier cherries
40g of dried apricots (one Sainsbury’s snack size bag)
40g of dried prunes (one Sainsbury’s snack size bag)
100g of dried cranberries
50g ground almond
1 cooking apple (peeled, cored and finely sliced)
1/2 orange zest
1/2 lemon zest
125ml of Harveys Bristol Creme
25ml of Stone’s Mulled Ginger Wine
1tblsp of rum
2 large eggs
To begin, mix the suet, breadcrumbs, flour, sugar, mixed spice, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg in a large bowl. So far, so Delia. The only thing different here is that we added the ginger.
Now add in all of the dried fruits (in our case, sultanas, cranberries, apricots, prunes & cherries) and the ground almond (Delia actually calls for sliced almonds but we only had this to hand). After a little mix, add the apple and the orange and lemon zests. Mmmm, zesty!
Hooray, booze time. Everyone’s favourite part, surely? In a separate bowl, mix together all of the alcohol. We traded Delia’s barley wine and stout suggestion for Bristol Cream! PHWOAR. And because we are outrageously festive, we threw in some mulled ginger wine for good measure. And they were good measures, believe me. Then add the two eggs for a jolly good mix. 
After beating the eggs and the alcohol together, pour over your ingredients and mix together. It is now traditional to get the family around (or your blogging partner in this instance) and make your wish – whilst vigorously stirring of course! We wished for a nice pudding.
Once your satisfied that the mixture has reached Delia’s desired sloppy consistency, it is then time to cover your bowl and leave overnight. The pudding will then need to be steamed.
As you might have guessed from the candles, we haven’t made this on a bright Sunday morning. That means that for us, today is Steam-up Sunday! Our pudding is currently steaming for 6 hours in a pudding bowl. It smells absolutely delicious and looks great too, even if we do say so ourselves! Once it has finished steaming today, it will then go into a cool dark place until Christmas day. Much like us. It will then be steamed once again for a further couple of hours. 
We hope we’ve inspired you to get stirring! It really was great fun and certainly put us the in mood for Christmas. We will be doing a special Christmas jumper posts soon but in case you are desperate to get your novelty knit on, Jo’s jumper on the left is from Snuggaroo* and Victoria’s ‘Nice Baubles’ jumper is from Primark.
J&V
Pingback: Saturday Summary - 30th November | Bonjour, Blogger!