Post 223: Rummy Christmas Pudding, mkII

Last year my Christmas pudding was declared a great success, here's the beauty - Rummy christmas pudding. The basic recipe was Rachel Allen's - I'd substituted pears for apples (due to having forgotten to buy apples) and rum just for preference.

I had a quick look at my recipe and remembering the ages I'd spent in the baking aisle last year, I thought "Yeah got all that". I'm old enough to know better really; I should always check the cupboard, so adapting to what I'd actually got. The ingredients turned out to be:

• 500gs mixed dried (last time out I'd bought individual dried fruit and candied peel; I'm interested to see if there's a noticeable difference)
• 100gs dried chopped prunes (these should have been Dates)
• 125 ml rum (Boozy. Nice!)
• 5 little pears (last year, I didn't peel these, but Mrs VegBox was assisting and despite proof in the form of last year's blog post she was having none of it)
• 200gs unsalted butter
• 180gs soft brown sugar
• 100gs ground almonds
• 4 eggs
• 250gs self-raising flour
• 1 lemon
• 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teapsoon each of baking powder and ground cinamon
• Whole almonds and cherries to decorate
• 6 tablespoons golden syrup

Method:

• Chop the prunes and put all the fruit and the rum in a big pan and simmer for a few minutes. Then cover and leave. This should have the fruit soaking up all the lovely rum
• Grate the pears, zest and squeeze the lemon, mix with the ground almonds (producing a most unappealing mush)

• Arrange in the bottom of two bowls the cherries and almonds, and add in the golden syrup
• Beat the eggs, mix with the butter and sugar. I heated the pan a little for this as it was a cold day and I was having trouble getting the butter soft enough to melt; need to be careful not to cook the eggs here though
• Add the sugar, and sift in the flour - mix
• Add in the pears etc - mix some more
• Add everything else and mix
• Add this carefully into the bowls (otherwise it'll mix in with the syrup)
• Place a ring of greasproof on the top inside the bowl and then another tied around to stop the water getting in

• Place bowls in boiling water and simmer for 3 hours

Doesn't look great before cooking:

After cooking, occaisionally feed with a little extra rum. Or a lot of extra rum if you're that way out. It looked rather better after cooking; and the almonds had mostly stayed at the bottom: