Ellie’s Christmas Pudding Chronicles: Evolving Flavors
It happens. I’m all about Christmas: planning the holiday party, baking cookies to send to friends, wrapping gifts in glitter paper that smears all over the couch. I’m like a disgusting mixture of an elf and when Frodo offers Galadriel the ring of power. Welcome back to my Christmas Pudding Chronicles. It’s only two weeks until Christmas and I’m up to my neck making my fig pudding. This week is another week of soaking the pudding and planning the “hard sauce”.
If you’re just joining me, this is my fourth week as a newcomer to the well-established tradition of making an authentic British-style Christmas pudding. The first post can give you an idea of the inspiration for this Christmas activity and will tell you how to soak the fruit before steaming. Although this richly spiced fruit pie can be made weeks in advance, you can make it anytime. Read here to see the recipe and how I mixed the dough and steamed the cake.
Dressing the cake with brandy and time
This week is another week of brandy soaking as we ‘cure the cake’. As I mentioned last week , you can infuse the cake with any spirit like rum or whiskey, just make sure you like the taste. This is a completely optional step if you’re not eating (even if it’s food), but I thought that if I kept the cake at room temperature for five weeks, then I might as well give it all the resources it needs to prevent this from happening. mold or other problems.
This got me thinking for the first time: why is Christmas pudding made so far in advance? In fact, I was happily walking along, trusting the process, and one of the editors asked me, “How does a cake not go bad after a MONTH?” This may have been the first question that came to your mind when you read “steam pudding five Sundays ago…” but you’d be a normal person and I’d just eat anything with the word “Christmas” in the name. .
According to a number of other accounts and blogs, all this waiting time is due to the development of taste. Dried fruits, the amount of fat, sugar and alcohol help ensure that the dessert is well preserved. When you consider that this modern birthday cake has roots in medieval sausage-making, and the version I’m making in 2023 began appearing in Victorian-era cookbooks , it’s no longer a concern. Baking a cake for five weeks or longer is a long-standing tradition. ( Read more about the history of Christmas pudding here .) Plus, American-style cakes are also full of butter and sugar. Can you remember a time when you had one that went rancid? Their biggest enemy is not mold, but drying out. Luckily, since the cake is steamed before serving, drying out the Christmas pudding is not a problem.
Brandy soaking again
If you, like me, are involved in soaking the pudding in brandy, remove the cake from storage and “feed” it with two more tablespoons of brandy or the spirit of your choice. There was a clever suggestion in the comments on last week’s post about spraying brandy, so I decided to try spraying alcohol instead of a pastry brush. It definitely worked. However, I ended up inhaling a lot of fumes and spraying the bowl and work surface as I got closer to the edges, so I don’t think it’s my favorite feeding method. It’s also inspired me to think about different methods, so I think I’ll try the turkey baster next week.
Next week I’ll be feeding cake again (a girl has to eat, after all) and making the second most important part of this tradition: the gravy. Go ahead, turn on some Christmas music and don’t forget to give your baby doll some alcohol.