Pot 124: Rummy Christmas Pudding

There's no point wasting time is there? - I might as well start getting excited about christmas. Starbucks's red cup are coming and I'm whipping myself into an egg-nog frenzy. As a first sign of this, I made a christmas pudding. Well, two. I was only trying to make one; but then when I got to the bottom of the recipe it siad I'd done enough for two. Hey-ho.

There are so many recipes out there, it's difficult to choose. In the end I plumped for Rachel Allen's and then adapted it, because (1) I didn't want to buy Whisky just to make a pudding (2) I forgot the cooking apples.

The recipe eventually going along the lines of:

• 100g raisins, sultans, cranberries, mixed peel, currants, halved dates, ground almond
• 125 ml rum (this was more that in the original, but it's christmas - more Booze!)
• 3 pears, unpeeled and grated
  
• 1 Lemon, zest and juice
  
• 6 tbsp golden syrup
  
• Whole Almonds to decorate
  
• 200g Butter, chilled and grated
  
• 180g soft dark brown sugar
  
• 4 Eggs, beaten
  
• 250g self-raising flour, sifted
  
• 1/2 tsp Baking powder, ground cinamon
  
• 1/4 or whole Nutmeg, finely grated
  

Which all looked mightily unappealing when mixed - which was pretty much all there was to the recipe. The only other thing was putting the syyrup  and decorating almonds in the bottom of the bowl. I didn't really understand grating the butter. I tried to do it quick, but the bits in my hand still melted. Then when it went into the bowl it just congealed again. Not a tip I'll be repeating.

After many 3 1/2 hours of simmering, it looked a little like this:

My careful placing of Almonds did not survive the cooking process.

Never mind. I'm still excited, jingle bells, jingle bells.........