Wow, supervising those puddings was WORK!
And so today, well, today we are wordless EXCEPT for this:
Suzanne’s Plum Pudding
1 ½ cups dried apricots, chopped semi fine
1 cup dates or figs, chopped semi fine
1 cup dried prunes, chopped semi fine
1 cups golden raisins, sprinkled with a little brandy or rum
1 cup black raisins, sprinkled with a little brandy or rum
1 large cooking apple, chopped fine
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
Zest and juices of 1 orange and 1 lemon (or tangerine)
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon mace
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon clove
1 cup plum purée (Optional but awfully good; frozen from summer’s crop)
2 cups bread crumbs from a hearty bread, if possible
1 ½ cups Cognac
1 ½ cups flour (sifted or not)
1 cup toasted almonds, pecans, or hazelnuts, chopped coarse
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
2 teaspoons duck fat (Optional)
3 eggs, beaten
Tiny pinch of cayenne
Cognac or rum to flavor puddings (some even use bourbon)
Mix everything but the flour and eggs in a very large bowl, and moisten with Cognac. Let sit overnight or up to two days, but you may also make the puddings immediately.
Butter pudding molds or little glass heatproof dessert bowls for individual puddings of 8 ounces. Or use larger glass bowls which will fit inside another bowl of simmering water. Add the rest of the ingredients to the fruit mixture, stirring well. Have a large shallow pot of boiling water ready and a rack, on which you will set your puddings.
Or, alternatively, steam the molds in the oven at 250F/165C in a pan of simmering water.
Check the water once during cooking to make sure here is enough in the pan to steam.
Pack the molds well, leaving about 1/2″ a the top. Cover tightly with foil and place the dishes in boiling water which comes halfway up the bowl. Lower heat, cover the pot, and simmer puddings for 1 to 1 ½ hours. Remove from water and let cool. Remove foil and loosen puddings with a sharp knife around the inside of the bowl. Invert puddings and pour 2 teaspoons brandy or rum over each one.
Wrap in plastic wrap, then in foil to ripen. The puddings will stay fresh in refrigerator for 1 year.
To serve, heat the oven to 350. Unwrap the pudding from the plastic wrap and put it back in the foil.
Heat in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
Serve with hard sauce: Mix 2 tablespoons softened butter with 2 cups powdered sugar and 2-3 teaspoons Cognac, rum, or milk until the sauce has the consistency of soft icing.
To flame pudding: Place 1 cup rum or Cognac in large ladle. Hold over open flame to heat the spoon. Liquor will ignite. Pour over the hot pudding and serve the hard sauce on the side or over the pudding as well.
Plum pudding beginning
Covered with foil and steaming
Ready for booze…then Santa time.
That sounds delicious, sweet Angel LouLou, but we wonder, does anyone sing after eating this Plum Pudding😹Double Pawkisses for a wonderful day to you and your mommy too🐾😽💞
Mais oui…everyone sings about the spirit of holidays in each bite…it’s not sticky, it’s like cake a bit.
I’ve never had plum pudding. It looks like quite the process to make.
No, it all goes in a bowl and waits for a day. Then flour and eggs are mixed in and you spoon t into a mold just as you would cake batter into a baking pan. The molds are covered tight with foil and put in a warm water bath half way up the dish to steam for 1 hour. They are ready after that.Just like waiting for a cake to bake except a bit longer.
I wish I would learn to love this traditional Christmas fare… What I do like is a mixture of various fruits, including raisins and other dried fruit, soaked/steeped in brandy. Not sure what it is called, but my mother always concocted that for special days…alas I have no recipe!
I don’t care for fruitcake either, LOL!We had one given as a gist and it was in the freezer for many years…hubby doesn’t like them either, teehee!
Years and years ago when I was a kid, someone gave us a plum pudding, and we all tried it, but none of the 5 of us liked it, so we put it out for the birds and squirrels,even they bypassed it, LOL! (Maybe not a bad thing, considering the alcohol!)
Well, there are plum puddings and there is mama’s….I think she could get you interested with a little slice with hard sauce on it: butter, powdered sugar and brandy mixed to a paste to melt over each serving…and as for fruitcakes, mama really doesn’t like the at all and everyone in Texas gave Corsicana fruitcakes for gifts and mama put hers somewhere out of sight and found it a year later and it was still good, except for the worms.
LOL.for the worms. At least the one buried in our freezer didn’t have those!!
There must be a fruitcake somewhere that doesn’t turn into a doorstop, non?
You must be exhausted after all that supervising, Loulou! It looks delicious.
I am pretty beat…but comfortably resting…
If I were to learn to do this properly, I’d want to be in a kitchen with an expert to teach me. They certainly do sound delicious.
Just throw it all in a bowl and let it sit for a day, then add eggs and flour and mix well and put into buttered small glass dishes to steam.
Thank you for the recipe. I am too lazy to make this. XO
You are too funny and not English so it does’t matter. You probably have a great pie on the table.
Very Traditional !
Mama makes them every year and just loves the smell…
That sure sounds plum good!
Brian’s Home ~ Forever
HAHA, it IS plum good. Mama actually froze plums in summber one year but not this year…
That looks fabulous but “daunting” – to me anyway being an “easy” cook in our household! For me simple is best – otherwise I may accidentally create a bomb that will explode in the oven! HAHAHAHA
Hugs, Pam
HAHA, which reminds mama of telling her sis in law how to microwave a poached egg…and she thinks he sis experimented in some way because he sis sent a photo of the inside of the microwave…you don’t want to know. But mama does it all the time: small glass dish half-filled with water. Break in 1 egg. Microwave 45 SECONDS and it’s done. Maybe her sis did 45 minutes……oh, boy.