Sweet red fruits and a splash of amaretto give this pudding an Italian spin. Soak the fruit the day before – and make sure your pudding basin fits your slow cooker!
Lucy, our former Food Editor creates lots of delicious meals each month. Her recipes are always packed with flavour and they're super easy too!
See more of Lucy Jessop’s recipes
Lucy Jessop
Lucy, our former Food Editor creates lots of delicious meals each month. Her recipes are always packed with flavour and they're super easy too!
See more of Lucy Jessop’s recipes
Subscribe to Sainsbury’s magazine
Rate this recipe
Print
Ingredients
200g dried mixed fruit
1 x 100g bag berries and cherries (or use 50g dried cherries, 25g dried cranberries and 25g dried blueberries)
100g natural glacé cherries, quartered
zest and juice of 1 medium orange
50ml amaretto
50ml brandy
100g dark muscovado sugar
1 tsp ground mixed spice
½ tsp ground cinnamon
a generous grating of fresh nutmeg
soft butter, to grease
2 medium eggs, lightly beaten
1 medium Bramley apple, about 225g, cored and grated
100g vegetarian suet
50g blanched almonds, roughly chopped
85g self-raising flour
65g fresh white breadcrumbs
Share:
Step by step
Get ahead
Make the pudding up to the end of step 5 up to 3 months ahead. Store in a cool dry place then reheat as per step 6.
Put all of the dried fruit, glacé cherries, orange zest and juice, amaretto and brandy, sugar and spices in a large bowl. Mix well to combine, cover and set aside overnight or up to a couple of days ahead.
When ready to cook, grease a 1-litre ceramic pudding basin (or Pyrex bowl) with a little butter and line the base with a circle of baking paper. Cut a square of baking paper, about 30cm, and cut the same sized piece of foil. Place the foil shiny-side down on a clean surface and lay the baking paper on top. Grease the baking paper well with butter, then, keeping both together, fold a 3cm pleat into the middle. This allows for expansion during cooking. Switch the slow cooker on to low.
Add the remaining ingredients and a pinch of salt to the soaked fruit and mix thoroughly to combine. Scrape the mixture into the prepared basin and level.
Cover the pudding with the foil and baking paper, buttered-side down, and press around the edges to enclose, while maintaining the pleat. Then secure tightly around the rim with a piece of string – tie twice around the rim of the bowl to make it secure. Trim off the surplus foil and paper, and add a string handle for easy lifting, if your pudding basin has a ridged lip.
Sit the basin inside the slow cooker. Boil the kettle and pour water around the pudding until it comes halfway up. Place the slow-cooker lid on top; it needs to be fully closed, with no gaps. Cook for 10 hours. Remove from the slow cooker and leave to cool completely. Then remove the paper and foil and replace with fresh wrappings, as before, ready for when you want to re-steam and serve. Store in a cool dark place, or the fridge.
On the day you want to serve the pudding, cook in the slow cooker as before, but for 4 hours on the low setting, until piping hot.
We like to serve this with whipped cream spiked with a few tablespoons of amaretto, to taste.
How do I flame the Christmas pudding? Turn out the steamed pudding onto a serving plate with a good-sized rim around the edge to catch any spirit. The important thing is to get the spirit really hot. Pour 2-3 tablespoons of brandy, rum or whisky into a long-handled metal ladle and heat it over a gas flame until hot.
You can use any other high alcohol liquor that you have to hand for flaming the pudding (though not a fortified wine, such as port) and cognac/brandy and whisky are often traditional choices. Port could be used for soaking the fruits for the pudding but make sure it is a sweet variety of port.
However, if it is difficult then you can use alternatives. A sweet marsala or Madeira wine are good alternatives but if you only have a bottle of rum, whisky or brandy on hand then one of these could also be used.
On Christmas Day, boil or oven steam for 1 hr. Unwrap and turn out. To flame, warm 3-4 tbsp brandy in a small pan, pour it over the pudding and set light to it.
With his wine merchant in Boulogne, Dickens was clearly a Francophile when it came to drink. But, by the time he died in 1870, he had embraced Scotch whisky and left 17 cases in his cellar. Whisky is no less flammable than brandy and, splashed over the pudding, burns just as prettily with the same blue flame.
Any pudding using fresh fruit for moisture will go off more quickly, whereas a Christmas pudding soaked in booze with high sugar and dried fruit content will last much longer. Some Christmas puddings, made with dried fruit in the traditional way, are fine to be eaten as much as two years after they were made.
There is also a slight risk that the puddings may be a little dry in comaprison with the regular Christmas pudding. As steaming is a gentle, humid method of cooking this may be less of a concern but you could try "feeding" the puddings with a little alcohol (if freezing, before you freeze them) to help them along.
Traditionally Christmas pudding is made with brandy, but I also love using Cointreau. Many others enjoy the flavor of cider and rum as well. If you are going to "feed the Christmas pudding" after cooking then you'll need extra alcohol, about two tablespoons every week you feed it.
The pudding we know today began life as a pottage. This was a kind of broth, including raisins and other dried fruit, spices and wine. It was thickened with breadcrumbs or ground almonds. Not dissimilar to the mince pies of yesteryear, it often included meat or at least meat stock.
Sounds wonderful, but Isabel doesn't want to use suet. To remedy that, King Arthur Flour says vegetable shortening with its similar melting point is the best substitute, but using it will change the flavour and character of the pudding.
Biscane Rum substitute is alcohol-free, and gluten free, too. Cheers! Biscane non-alcoholic Rum has only 1 gram of sugar per serving, gluten free, and vegan. Classic Rum flavors and aromas of sugar-cane and molasses emerge when it's stirred into your favorite Rum co*cktail.
You can use whiskey, rum, brandy, amaretto etc but you can honestly just pick your favourite, the cheapest, the nicest, etc… it's entirely up to you. You mix the alcohol into the fruit at the start of making the Christmas cake, and then you use it to feed the cake until you eat it.
You can use rum, brandy or whisky for spice, or if you like citrus flavours, try an orange liqueur. Cherry brandy and amaretto will also work well if you prefer these.
Conclusion: Christmas puddings contain ethanol that does not all evaporate during the cooking process. However, the rise in BAC after ingestion of a typical slice of Christmas pudding was negligible and unlikely to affect work performance or safety or impair a health care worker's ability to make complex decisions.
Address: 58866 Tricia Spurs, North Melvinberg, HI 91346-3774
Phone: +50616620367928
Job: Real-Estate Liaison
Hobby: Graffiti, Astronomy, Handball, Magic, Origami, Fashion, Foreign language learning
Introduction: My name is Lilliana Bartoletti, I am a adventurous, pleasant, shiny, beautiful, handsome, zealous, tasty person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
We notice you're using an ad blocker
Without advertising income, we can't keep making this site awesome for you.