Holiday Recipe Round Up - because some need to be made early, some need practice and some could be for Thanksgiving too!

Making a traditional Christmas Fruit Cake is quite the undertaking - you have to round up all those lovely ingredients, which could include making your own candied/glaceed citrus peel then you have to bake it nice and early - like right now - and store it in a nice tight cake tin to develop it's lovely favours then a few days before the day itself you need to cover it in marzipan and ice it with Royal Icing - so thus the post at this time of the year. Click on the name below to go to the recipe in my blog archives:

IRISH CHRISTMAS CAKE - CISTE NOLLAG

Here's a recipe for one you could bake much closer to Christmas if you don't have time to do it now:

LAST MINUTE GOLDEN CRIMBLY CAKE

...and then there's the Christmas Pudding - which should traditionally be made on Stir-Up Sunday - this year it falls on November 22nd - again this is a recipe that really improves with aging.

The hearty ingredients for a very traditional Christmas Pudding

CHRISTMAS PUDDING OR PLUM PUDDING?

My personal favourite:

NEW ENGLAND CHRISTMAS PUDDING

Full of wonderful New England ingredients like cranberries and pumpkin and with a good dash of tea soaked raisins - yum!!!

 An unusual pudding:

STEAMED APRICOT HOLIDAY PUDDING 

This could become a Thanksgiving holiday tradition?

Here's is a play on Christmas Puddings and is a quick and easy make for anytime over the holiday season:

MINI CHRISTMAS PUDDING DRIED FRUIT BALLS

 This little delight might need some practice to make perfect but is always an impressive site when brought ceremonially to the after dinner table:

YULE LOG or BUCHE de NOEL

 And last but certainly not least the wonderful anytime of the year but especially on Christmas Day or New Year's Eve - a luscious confection of jelly (I made mine vegetarian) English custard, homemade Ladyfingers and lashings of whipped cream:

 CHERRY AND GINGER TRIFLE

'Tis the season to enjoy baking and cooking and cosy toes cups of tea by the fire - so please have fun!!

PATRICIA SHEA DESIGNS

Mini Christmas Pudding Dried Fruit Balls

Awww - aren't these charming little Christmas Pudding sweeties! Chock full of dried fruity goodness, subtle, tart, almondy, tooth-achingly sweet in a good way balls of deliciousness!

This is a very simple but very sticky recipe - the original recipe which I gleaned from British Country Living's December issue said to work the dried fruit through the finest blade of a mincer - which you can do if you happen to have a mincer but as I didn't I first tried a coffee grinder and when that got quickly clogged I resorted to some serious chopping with a cleaver type knife in small batches by hand and it worked really well albeit somewhat time consuming - so let us begin!

ASSEMBLE YOUR INGREDIENTS:

You can use any combination of dried fruits that strike your fancy - you can see from the dark colours of mine that I chose organic, non-sulphured but whatever tastes good to you should work well - just follow your tastebuds!

This recipe makes 9 hearty Christmas Balls! Recipe multiplies no problem!

2oz/50g of toasted almonds

2oz/50g dried apricots

2oz/50g mixed raisins, white raisins/sultanas and currants

2oz/50g soft pitted prunes

2oz/50g crystallized ginger

1oz/25g dried cranberries - I chose really bright in flavour ones sweetened with apple juice so the end result had a nice tang!!

3 teaspoons honey

Finely grated zest of one unwaxed preferably organic lemon

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 heaped teaspoon of freshly grated ginger

goodly pinch of freshly ground nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon or any combination there of - also you could add a big pinch of ground ginger if you don't put in the grated fresh ginger.

Plate covered in granulated sugar to roll the balls in.

1. Toast the almonds until fragrant - about 5 minutes at 375 but it varies so check regularly they are not burning.

2. Let almonds cool completely.

3. Put almonds in a small plastic bag and bang with a heavy rolling pin until they are broken into small pieces.

4. Grind in a coffee grinder in 2 batches until fine - they may get a bit oily but that's actually OK in this recipe.

5. Chop, chop, chop all the dried fruit in small batches until they get nice and sticky, the pieces are small, there are no chunks and they hold together when pressed.

 6. Mix the fruits, ground almonds, honey, grated ginger, spices and lemon juice and zest with a fork until evenly blended.

7. Take about a small tablespoon of the sweetmeat and roll into a ball, if it doesn't stick together add more honey, then roll in the sugar on the plate and pop into a sweet little paper cup. Ta dah - that's pretty much it except for...

HONEY ICING to make it look like a little Christmas Pudding:

 This is the wing it part - 

2 heaped tablespoons of icing/confectioners sugar sifted so there are no lumps.

Honey and milk - just a tad of each.

Starting with a teeny tiny amount of the honey in a small bowl slowly slowly slowly add some honey and blend until smooth, add a little milk and blend until smooth and work the whole into a dense, thick paste that won't run when you put the tiniest bit on top of one of the Christmas Balls - work it a little to drip as above and then allow to dry. This is the hard part - hard to know how thick, hard to know how SMALL of an amount to pop on the top of a ball, hard to know how little honey and or milk, that can depend on the humidity, to add to the sugar but err on the side of less and least and you'll be fine.

I should have bought some Maraschino Cherries to put on the top - the flavour would have gone well with the almond in the sweets and you can buy non-artificial ones from The Silver Palate so instead I used some raspberry infused cranberries that were redder than the ones in the recipe.

Next time I make these I think I will add a ball of marzipan in the middle and maybe switch out the apricots for dates - I LOVE marzipan and think that would be a real treat!! The flavour does develop a little with time so you can make these a day ahead if you'd like.

Let me know if you make these and feel free to post your pics on my Facebook page HERE 

We are awaiting a big snowstorm here in Maine - Electra is her name! I love blizzards and hope to get some nice photographs - in the meantime here are some pictures from a snow earlier this week.

 A little red squirrel is getting a snack ready for later!

 My favourite apple tree has plenty of apples for the deer who love to come for a midnight snack - last year we didn't get a single apple because of an early springtime frost - you can see we got plenty this year!

This blogpost is part of the December Tea Time Treats over at Lavender and Lovage and The Hedgecombers - do bob over and have a look at all the yummy sparkly delights - click in the box below! Thanks!

Apricot Holiday Steamed Pudding for Christmas or maybe even Thanksgiving...

(Those are the zested lemons cut into slices before I make them into lemonade this evening, they look a little dry so I thought I would explain!)

Here is my pudding for this year's Holiday celebrations - I think you could easily make this for Thanksgiving and just let it mature for a few days, or store it away for your Christmas Family Dinner - it is a variation on the usual densely fruit studded, very sweet and divine luscious Christmas Pudding - the likes of which you will find HERE on the beautiful Lavender and Lovage blog.

My Steamed Apricot Pudding is a slight variant on the Apricot Holiday Pudding found in "Glorious Gifts from your Kitchen" by Lisa Yockelson - it does contain SUET (luckily I could get local suet from grass fed, farm raised, humanely treated beef) which is a necessary part of a good traditional steamed pudding so it is not for vegetarians, I do have vegetarian alternatives listed at the bottom of this post - I suppose you could substitute butter for the suet but I think the pudding will be more greasy and I cannot guarantee it's keeping quality as suet is added not only to make a less greasy pudding but also improves the keeping qualities of a pudding made so long before the day it will be eaten.

As you can see I had no real holly to hand so I printed out one of my own designs and made it a little oversized for more wit - et voila, holly is on top of the pudding, an absolute necessity if it is going to be eaten on Christmas Day!! :)

So let's begin!! Have a nice big pasta pot/double boiler ready on the stove with bubbling hot water and make sure the water comes up to only about half way up the sides of your chosen bowl - butter very well a pudding bowl of 2 pint/one quart/4 cup capacity.

ASSEMBLE YOUR INGREDIENTS:

Makes a pudding sized for about 6 people with dainty appetites - this pudding is nowhere near as sweet as the usual pudding so I am assuming people might want larger portions:

6oz/1 heaped cup dried apricots ( I used Turkish apricots, organic and unsulphured thus why they are not bright orange) chopped into 1/3" pieces

4ozs/ 1/2 cup whole milk

4ozs/ 1/2 cup 1/2 and 1/2 or light cream

1 tablespoon of freshly grated gingerroot

1. Put these 4 ingredients into a pan together and simmer very gently on the stove for about 20 minutes until the apricots are nice and soft then strain the apricots and set aside the resultant cream until cool - don't leave this alone it can curdle really quickly, stay with the pan and stir whilst the apricots soften and soak up the milk/cream.

4oz/1 cup white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda/bicarb of soda

1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

2. Sift all of the above together and reserve on a sheet of parchment/baking paper- or a plate - whatever you have to hand - the paper helps you get it into the bowl better as you can curve it to direct the flour etc.

4oz/1 heaped cup of suet - the best quality you can find, grated - best done when the suet is very cold but then allow to warm to room temp.

2oz/ 1/4 cup/ 1/2 stick of salted butter softened to room temperature

4ozs sugar/ 3/4 cup sugar 

Finely grated rind/zest of two, preferably organic, unwaxed, lemons

3. Cream the butter and suet until fluffy and well blended

4. Add sugar and beat until light in colour and even fluffier.

5. Add the lemon zest and blend until evenly distributed.

2 large eggs whisked

1 1/2 ozs/heaped 1/2 cup white bread crumbs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence/extract 

6. Add the whisked eggs in 4 goes and beat between additions.

7. Add the flour/dry ingredients in 2 goes and blend well between additions and add the drained apricot cream alternately.

8. Blend in the apricots gently but evenly.

9. Finally blend in the breadcrumbs.

Ta dah - you have your pudding batter:

Your batter may well look a little curdled but worry not - everything will be OK

10. Spoon the thick batter into the well buttered bowl - there should be quite a bit of space left at the top of the bowl - this pudding expands quite a lot so you don't want it too full:

 11. Cut two circles, one each, of parchment paper and aluminum foil a good bit bigger than your bowl top and secure with rubber bands, then tie string thusly around the bowl so you'll be able to pop it into the steamer and back out without much trouble or burned fingers!

Yes this is a different bowl from a different pudding - I forgot to get a pic of this one before it went in - oops!!

12. Bob your pudding into the steamer and let her steam for 2 hours - check occasionally that there's enough water in there and don't let the pan burn dry - not at all recommended for all sorts of reasons!

13. After 2 hours lift the pudding from the steamer and set on a cooling rack for 10 minutes, then uncover the pudding and allow it to cool completely.

14. Now wrap in waxed/parchment paper and pop into an air tight container until you are ready to reheat for it's debut at either the Thanksgiving or Christmas table - to do such put it back into the bowl it was steamed in - again well buttered and back into a steamer for about an hour until heated through.

For this pudding I made Sticky Toffee Pudding sauce and thickened it a bit with confectioners/icing sugar and slathered atop and added my 'fake' holly, again not traditional, the sauce I mean, but oh so very good:

STICKY TOFFEE SAUCE: 

2 1/2oz/ heaped 1/4 cup brown sugar 

1 1/2 oz / 3 tablespoons salted butter 

 2 tablespoons cream or half and half 

1. Put all three ingredients in a pan to melt together, mix and keep mixing whilst letting it bubble a couple of minutes until it gets a bit thick - allow to cool and then add a tablespoon at a time of confectioners/icing sugar until the sauce gets quite thick then quickly spread on top of the pudding:

As you can see this is a light coloured pudding and it is very light in texture too, it cuts beautifully - a quiet pudding, James says for an American it is most similar in flavour to something like a Date and Walnut loaf - not too sweet but still quite delightful. It is best served warm as the suet makes it a bit dense when cold.

It does definitely need a few days to develop the flavour so it you are thinking of making if for Thanksgiving do so in the next couple of days!!

Happy baking, steaming and Holidays to you all - please let me know if you make this and feel free to post pics on my FACEBOOK PAGE

For the Folkloric Star fabric, also available as wrapping paper, in the pictures click HERE, for the polka dot holly and other polka dot Christmas items click HERE and for the Blue Rhapsody napkins click HERE 

Thank you!!

Vegetarian options for a Christmas Pudding:

New England Christmas Pudding

Traditional Christmas Pudding

A New England Christmas Pudding for Stir Up Sunday

Will you join me on my somewhat experimental journey this Stir Up Sunday the traditional day for making your Christmas Pudding in times past - let's revive the tradition I say!! - and make a slightly different Christmas Pudding which I am calling New England Christmas Pudding because of the addition of cranberry sauce and pumpkin puree - although to be fair Brits do eat cranberry sauce by the bucket load at Christmas but with it being so close to Thanksgiving I feel these ingredients have a more American bent. I haven't made this pudding before so I won't be able to tell you how it comes out or tastes until Christmas Day itself. If you'd like a more traditional pudding I did one a few years ago HERE or Auntie Beeb (The BBC) has a good recipe too - right HERE. Having looked at quite the number of Christmas Pudding recipes over the last couple of weeks I have to tell you white flour is about the only consistent ingredient - oh and sugar but other than that there are recipes with breadcrumbs, figs, prunes, raisins, with eggs, without eggs, with apples, potatoes, carrots and on and on - they do all get the living daylights steamed out them though and that seems to be the key to their rich and dense nature. I have adapted this recipe from one I found on Pinterest from Babble Food I have added grated ginger and nutmeg and garam masal - a trick I found from Passionate About Baking when Deeba added it to her Fruit Cake a couple of years ago - a rich and fragrant spice that is perfectly suited to the exotic nature of a Christmas Cake or Pudding whose spicy additions help 'keep' the cake over it's month of maturing. So off we go. 

Firstly you will need to soak 3oz/1/2 cup of raisins in 3 fluid ounces of hot strong tea or apple juice for about 5 hours until they are nice and plump.

Now have a double boiler bubbling away ready to receive your lovely pudding.

INGREDIENTS: 

6oz/1 1/2 cups of white plain flour

7oz/1 cup of sugar - white or brown your choice

2 eggs beaten

2oz/2 tablespoons butter melted

4oz/ 1/2 cup cranberry relish/sauce/compote - I made my own recipe below below

4oz/ 1/2 cup pumpkin puree - I did my own from a pie pumpkin - I find it is less watery.

Pie pumpkin ready for steaming - you steam with the skin on - something I learned the hard way when I spent hours making my first pumpkin pie due to peeling a very large pumpkin before steaming and making my hands so sore - when it it soft you can so easily scoop the flesh from the skin - DUH!!!!

 1oz candied peel - I did my own that's why it looks a little grey and not bright orange like the commercial stuff - but that's OK for this recipe, I mean the commercial stuff, you don't have to make your own.

1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon of garam masala - you don't have to use this if you don't want - you can use 1 teaspoon of cloves or mace.

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Tea soaked raisins, homemade candied orange peel, homemade cranberry relish, fresh ginger and nutmeg - YUM!!

1. Sift and swish all the dry ingredients together.

2. Mix all the wet ingredients together.

3. Mix the wet into the dry in batches until well blended.

That was hard!!!

4. Pour the batter into a greased basin that is about 5" high and 7" diameter - or you could use 2 smaller ones to the same effect - same amount of time steaming.

5. Cover well and leave in a cool place, but not the fridge, for a few hours or overnight to help lighten the pudding.

6. When you are ready to steam put a circle of buttered paper on the top of each pud and then cover tightly with aluminium foil and tie with string leaving long ends for easy putting into and taking out of the steamer!

Now put into a double steamer basket so the basin/s are not touching the water and steam the little darlings for about 3 hours, make sure you keep checking the water isn't getting too low.

7. Take puds out and let cool, then store away in a covered container til Christmas Day (again not the fridge) when you will retrieve them from their resting and maturing place and you steam them, YES AGAIN, for about another three hours. You will end up with a delicious fruity, moist pudding which you decant from their basins, serve hot and slather in brandy butter which is a simple combination of butter (12 tbsps), brown sugar (1/4 cup) and 6 tablespoons of brandy...cream butter and sugar together until light, beat in brandy a little at a time...very simple, a little crunchy and oh so delicious on a Christmas Pud.....you can also do the traditional lighting of the Pud by pouring a couple of tablespoons of brandy over the top of the pud and lighting it with a match...it burns off quite quickly and looks beautiful. Happy steaming!!

Nice bright Cranberry relish made from Maine cranberries - yea!!

Apparently cranberry growing is back on the rise in Maine - HERE are some cranberry facts from the Ricker Hill website.

6oz fresh cranberries

2.5 fl oz/ 1/4 cup apple juice/cider (not alcoholic cider)

2.5 fl oz/ 1/4 cup maple syrup

1 garlic clove (yes I put garlic in the pudding - you can leave it out if you like but I thought I'd be really daring)

2oz/ 14 cup sugar

2.5 fl oz/ 1/4 cup water
 

Put all the above into a small saucepan and cook until thick and red and lovely - allow to cool before using in your pudding. 

 As you can see I am working on some Christmas ideas and my handmade felt snowman and Santa are lounging around whilst I make my pudding.

Let me know if you venture with me on my Christmas Pudding SHEAnanigans:)

For those of an even more adventurous spirit here's another recipe from the book "Good Things from England" by Florence White - I am intrigued and may make this one soon too.

VEGETABLE PLUM PUDDING from Miss Mary Smith

INGREDIENTS:
4ozs potatoes peeled and grated (that's a good start for me - love my spuds I do!!)
4ozs carrots
3oz sugar
4oz mixed currants and raisins
3oz suet but you can probably use butter
1/2 oz candied peel 
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
A little milk if necessary

METHOD:
Same as above for buttering pudding basin, having steamer ready etc.

1. Mix everything but the egg and milk together and then blend in the egg and a little milk to make a loose batter and proceed as for above.

I'll let you know if I make it :) 

Happy Baking, or rather steaming! - Patricia

Here's a slice of said pudding with a big old dollop of brandy butter melting on top - tastes so much more appetizing than this picture looks :)

By the way you will notice there are no plums in my Christmas Pudding and there are usually no plums in most of them these days - I have heard two different explanations for this - either they were originally made with prunes which are dried plums OR the word plum was used latterly for expensive or excellent - of the best quality. Whichever is it we may never know but I would like to make one with prunes - that sounds awfully good to me. 

Christmas Pudding or Plum Pudding?

The ingredients...minus the egg I forgot!

Look at the apples, they are Black Oxfords grown

in Paris, Maine...they are beautiful!

The 'pud' mixed and ready to rest overnight,

apparently this helps with the lightness

of the pudding and helps marry

the flavours!

The 'puds' ready to be steamed with their

little discs of buttered paper and aluminium foil covers...

So forgive me the lateness of this posting.....I should have done this a week ago so all you wooden spoon and pudding basin wielding Anglophiles could have made your Christmas Puds on Stir-Up Sunday, the traditional day for making one's puddings but, alas, Thankies got in the way and here I am making my puddings late...although the one I have chosen for you doesn't need too much time to mature, it is quite grown up already....By the way the reason it is also called a PLUM pudding, even though it has no plums (!!!!) is because in Elizabethan times imported plums were held in such high esteem that the word plum came to be used in reference to other dried fruits......I use it myself to mean something is great as in "What a plum spot thou hast given to my Plum Pudding on your delightful Christmas prandial table!!!"...and other such comments!

I have chosen a vegetarian pud as I read something on David Lebovitz's blog that has put me off kidney suet for perhaps the rest of my life.

...and away we go....."Gourmet Christmas Pudding" from Rose Elliot's Gourmet Vegetarian Cooking with slight variations by me

INGREDIENTS: (If you need conversions from weights to cups please check out Sue Pallett's website..the link is listed in my blogroll, Thanks!)

8oz fine wholewheat crumbs (about five slices of good bread, I crumbed it in a coffee grinder with excellent results)

4oz butter

4oz whole wheat flour (I only had white and it worked fine)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1 teaspoon cardamom (my change, the recipe called for 2 teaspoons mixed spice but I like cardamom, especially with the lemon in the recipe)

1 teaspoon nutmeg (again my addition 'cos I like nutmeg)

2oz fine brown sugar

4oz sultanas (golden raisins)

4oz raisins

4oz currants

2oz candied peel chopped

2oz crystallized ginger chopped

grated rind of one lemon (organic if you can)

grated rind of one orange (ditto)

2oz flaked almonds (I toasted these quite dark as I like that nutty flavour)...honestly though I think you can leave them out as I don't remember almonds in the puds from my childhood

1 egg

1 tablespoon orange juice

2 tablespoons lemon juice (I added an extra tablespoon of lemon 'cos I like the tang of it against the dried fruit)

4 tablespoons brandy...I used port because it is all we had...bet you can use whiskey too - or 4 tablespoons of apple juice/cider/pomegranate juice/orange juice - your choice if you don't want to use alcohol.

10 fluid oz brown ale...or you can substitute apple juice/cider

Phew, I'm exhausted with typing already....the rest is easy though!!

Put everything dry into a nice big mixing bowl and mix well. Whisk the egg with orange and lemon juices, add brandy (port or whiskey) and finally brown ale, add the liquids to the dry bits and stir very well. Cover well and leave in a cool place, but not the fridge, for a few hours or overnight to help lighten the pudding. When you are ready to steam, spoon the mixture into greased pudding basins...one large one (2 and a half pint size) or a variety of small ones to give as gifts, put a circle of buttered paper on the top of each pud and then cover tightly with aluminium foil and put into a double steamer basket so the basins are not touching the water and steam the little darlings for about 3 hours, make sure you keep checking the water isn't getting too low.

Take puds out and let cool, then store away in a covered container til Christmas Day (again not the fridge) when you will retrieve them from their resting and maturing place and you steam them ,YES AGAIN, for about another three hours. You will end up with a delicious fruity, moist pudding which you decant from their basins, serve hot and slather in brandy butter which is a simple combination of butter (12 tbsps), brown sugar (1/4 cup) and 6 tablespoons of brandy...cream butter and sugar together until light, beat in brandy a little at a time...very simple, a little crunchy and oh so delicious on a Christmas Pud.....you can also do the traditonal lighting of the Pud by pouring a couple of tablespoons of brandy over the top of the pud and lighting it with a match...it burns off quite quickly and looks beautiful. Happy steaming!!