Food with Passion: My nanny Farrell’s Christmas pudding

From Tallaght, John Paul Kennedy is a self-taught cook with a passion for good old-fashioned home cooking

It’s only over the past few years that I have rediscovered a nostalgic love for Christmas puddings and making them!

This is a recipe inspired by my Nanny Farrell, my Mam’s mother, who was a trained chef and excellent baker.

While it’s very easy to make, my key tip is to write down the list of ingredients and tick each one off as you pop it into your shopping basket, as some of the ingredients, namely all of the dried fruits are not ones I normally store in my pantry!

Ingredients:

225g plain flour

375g soft dark brown sugar

200ml of stout / Guinness

1 teaspoon of ground cloves

1 teaspoon of Nutmeg

1 teaspoon of Cinnamon

100g chopped almonds

225g Shredded Suet

200g Sultanas

200g Currants

200g Raisins

175g Mixed Peel

200g White Breadcrumbs

4 eggs

1 small cooking apple, peeled, cored and chopped

Juice and Zest of one orange

50ml of whiskey

Method:

1. Grease with butter two pudding basins, this recipe makes two 600ml puddings.
2. In a large bowl add in the flour, mixed spice, nutmeg. Then add in the sultanas, currants, raisins, almonds, mixed peel, apple suet and sugar and mix together.
3. In a separate bowl mix the eggs, orange juice, stout / Guinness and whiskey.
4. Stir this into the dry ingredients and mix until all well combined.
5. Add the orange zest and give the mixture one last good mix.
6. If you can leave overnight to allow the flavours to infuse and the dried fruits to plump up! Cover the bowl with a clean, dry tea towel and leave overnight.
7. Divide the mixture between your two greased pudding basins.
8. Cover each pudding basin generously with tin foil but leave room at the top to allow the puddings to expand.
9. Place into your steamers, water coming half way up the pot and steam for 6-7 hours. Check the steamers from time to time and top up with water as required. Important that you don’t let the water boil off dry.
10. Once cooked, place a circle of parchment paper on each pudding and wrap in a dry cloth or tea towel and store in a cool dry place. I usually store mine on the top shelf in my wardrobe.
11. On Christmas day before serving steam for another two hours before serving

My beloved Mam and Dad were huge fans of Christmas puddings served with lashings of freshly whipped cream and custard.

While they are no longer with us, the Christmas tradition of making Christmas puddings is one I will always associate with them and the beaming smiles on their faces as they tucked into their pudding for Christmas dessert each year.