A joyful chocolate alternative to Christmas Pudding

Stir Up Sunday (26th November) is approaching, but what’s your favourite festive dessert? Are you a plum pudding lover or hater? I offer some Christmas pudding inspiration and a luscious alternative.

Welcome back to Pen and Spoon! It’s Stir Up Sunday next weekend when it’s customary in the UK to make a traditional Christmas Pudding. This week I’m exploring my love for this rich, fruity, heavily spiced dessert BUT I know not everyone is a fan, so I’ve included a glorious alternative. The story is free to all subscribers, but the recipe is for paid subscribers only. If you’d like to join my lovely community of paid subscribers and support my work (for as little as 97p per week !), just click the button. I’d also love you to share this newsletter and spread the love for Pen and Spoon. Many thanks, Sue XX.

Apparently, there’s a parallel universe in which everyone detests traditional Christmas pudding. Peer into the internet, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s riddled with headlines urging us to come clean about our hatred for the stuff, or blaming avocado-scoffing Gen Z for obliterating yet another good old British tradition.

All I can say is, in my world, everyone loves it, and Christmas wouldn’t be the same without it. I mean, aside from its actual deliciousness (more on that later) there’s the whole theatricality (or comedy at our place) of getting the thing lit. We scramble to locate the matches and then forget, for more time than is reasonable for intelligent humans, that cold booze won’t catch fire and has to be heated first. Then, when it’s finally aflame, the assembled crowd is silent for a beat too long before raising a cheer, as they wait to be sure my eyebrows haven’t gone up too. Then I slowly and carefully bear the inferno to the table hoping the burning booze doesn’t spill off the plate and all over my hands.

I think tradition has a lot to do with my household’s love for this heavy, rich, intensely spiced, deliciously stodgy dessert. “Popularised by Charles Dickens, Christmas — or plum — pudding has been a festive staple for centuries, with a history as rich as its flavour,” says food historian

Sam Bilton

in a lovely article about its origins in National Geographic. And pudding expert Regula Ysewijn also has a fascinating piece about the history of Christmas pudding in her Substack here.

Even in Australia, where it’s way too hot in December for a steaming dessert to be remotely sensible, Christmas pudding is a fixture on the Christmas table alongside fruit salad and pavlova. I don’t remember my mum ever making one from scratch, but my grandmother did. Wrapped in a calico shroud, she would hang it from the handle of the back door in the kitchen, like a diminutive upside-down ghost.

Sadly I don’t know how my grandmother made hers, and I don’t have my own traditional version to share because I just make (and often adapt) other people’s recipes. For years I made a glorious version, filled with dried tropical dried fruit and a golden crumb that was lighter than the dark, dense, raisin-packed versions. It was photocopied from an Australian Vogue magazine, and although I kept it safely tucked away in a folder, the words and pictures slowly faded away over time and became useless hazy outlines.

Over the years, I’ve dabbled with using suet - shredded beef or mutton fat - in my Christmas puddings. It’s widely considered essential to keep the pudding moist during the very long cooking process. One of my favourite recipes that uses it is Nigella’s Ultimate Christmas Pudding but last year I made a recipe published in Delicious magazine; it was editor Karen Barnes’ mother’s and it’s an absolute beauty.

But suet does makes Christmas pudding just that little bit more dense than I like it and I find that if you soak your fruit well beforehand, it not really necessary. If you’re inclined to the suet-free route, try Diana Henry’s wonderful England Ale-soaked Christmas Pudding - the ale just imparts extra depth of flavour. Whatever suet-free recipe you use, look out for one that includes grated fresh fruit in the mix, like apple (Diana uses it in hers) or even banana, to keep the pudding moist.

I know a lot of people think Christmas pudding is a faff to make, but the truth is they’re easy and incredibly satisfying. The only challenging part, really, is corralling the long list of ingredients together and weighing them out. Don’t get too worried if you don’t have the booze specified in the recipe in which to soak the fruit - anything you like the flavour of will work, in all honesty. (My favourite is Pedro Ximénez, because it tastes so intensely of raisins, and therefore works brilliantly). And if you forget to soak the fruit overnight, don’t worry about that either. Place the fruit and booze in a pan, bring gently to the boil and then remove from the heat. Once the mixture has cooled the fruit will be tender and plump.

Likewise, with the dried fruit, I generally find that sticking to the total quantity specified in the recipe, but using up what I have or fancy, really works well. Adding dried tropical fruit (mango for example) and varieties with tang (cranberries, cherries) along with the standard raisins, currants and sultanas makes the pudding more vibrant and less rich.

As you know, I’m a big fan of leftovers, and this is a major added benefit of a traditional Christmas Pudding: gobbling up what’s left the next day. Fry slices in butter for a decadent Boxing Day brunch. Or make mini trifles by layering crumbled pudding, softly whipped cream and leftover cranberry sauce in little glasses.

If I haven’t converted you to the joys of a traditional Christmas Pudding, I offer you a glorious alternative, from my book, Cocoa. If you don’t fancy using Marmalade in the pudding, cranberry sauce would also work beautifully, or try your favourite tart jam.

Magnificent photo by Yuki Sugiura

CHOCOLATE, MARMALADE AND GINGER STEAMED PUDDING

Chocolate and marmalade are a magnificent match in this traditional steamed
pudding, made more delicious with the addition of nuggets of preserved ginger.
The sponge itself is lovely and moist, and invested with a generous marmalade
crown. But as it doesn’t have rivers of sauce, it’s best served with a jug of custard ––ideally spiked with rum or whisky––alongside.