Stir-up Sunday / Christmas (or Plum) Pudding

For years I’ve been collecting a number of plum pudding (a.k.a. Christmas pudding) recipes. Why, you may ask? I’ve always had a fascination with it ever since I read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol — or to be more precise, even before that, when I read British stories as a child. I probably have as many recipes of plum pudding as I do of fruitcake, which are really very similar, except that pudding is steamed and fruitcake is baked, and one is flamed at serving time, the other is not. I also wonder why fruitcake is sometimes “marzipanned”, while pudding is served with hard sauce (“hard” because of the alcohol, not because of the texture).

The one time (pre-blogging) I had made it myself I used a bundt pan and it just didn’t look right, though I must say it tasted nothing more than a very moist fruitcake — an effect which I think could also be achieved by warming up some (good) fruitcake in the microwave and pouring the same hard sauce on it. I’ve been tempted to use some suggestions of using a regular mixing bowl, but I did so want that hole in the middle so the sauce drips on both the inside and the outside of the pudding. Well this year I finally bought a REAL steamed pudding mold.

I’m still debating whether to post it at Baking Delights (Aisa’s and my new playground) or here, since I obviously can’t post it at Noodles. However, it’s not allergy-free. Not yet anyway. Perhaps next year. This year I want to make it as traditional as possible, since my folks will be here and they (as far as I can tell) are not allergic to anything! Though I will be very careful to give them only small slices, as they are watching their cholesterol, and I’m sure the suet in the pudding will not help.

I will post the recipe at Christmas, so I have a picture for it, but let me leave you with my gathered-up notes, links, etc. so you can decide if you want to do this yourself or not.

Incidentally, I’m still confused (maybe one of you can help me out). The Christmas pudding ingredients are traditionally mixed-up on Stir-up Sunday, which according to some sources is the Sunday BEFORE Advent, in which case it was yesterday and we missed it, and some sources say it’s the FIRST Sunday of Advent. Which is it really? I’m curious both for religious as well as culinary reasons. If it were a fruitcake I’d want for it to have time enough to age, which is why ours probably won’t get eaten until Epiphany, or even Valentine’s Day of next year (and next year I’m starting my fruitcake in September, or maybe even in August). But the pudding should be okay aging for just under 4 weeks before serving time, right?

Mrs. Mackie’s Christmas Pudding Recipe. Looks interesting, though I have no idea who Mrs. Mackie is. May research or not, depending on time.

from NPR, a story from last year — the recipe supposedly is from England.

I’m leaning towards trying one of these, or at least my version of them: Mrs. Beeton’s famous recipes

Simone Walsh at Etsy makes and sells the Christmas pudding coins that should go in the pudding — too late for us this year. But they’re pretty, and quite affordable too!

Oh my. That looks almost scary. — I’m also wondering — are there two traditional shapes? The round one which comes from wrapping the pudding and hanging it? And the one that’s in a mold with the hole in the middle? I have a ball mold I can use for this, used it to make a monster cake for Paco one year…. maybe next year I’ll use that.

If I don’t make up my own recipe, I’ll use this one from June. I’m glad she uses regular suet. I tried to find the vegetarian one but they were out (an odd time of year to be if you ask me) so I had to get the real stuff, which is as it should be. At least for first-timers.

Oh, yay! Perfect timing! Cici started a discussion on this at 4Real and now we have answers from Kathryn in the UK and our Liturgical Year guru, Jenn. I think I’ll follow Kathryn’s recipe and a bit of June’s. Don’t you love the blogosphere?

We’ll be cheating too, though, as it’s already Monday.