Mini Christmas Pudding
Introduction: Mini Christmas Pudding
Christmas is just around the corner, and we loved a little twist with some traditional Christmas dessert.
This year‘s Christmas I'm planning to make some mini sized Christmas pudding -- individually served after dinner and they would look absolutely cute on the plate to surprise the guests.
They're really easy to make, and would be perfect as gifts or your dessert for your holiday season.
Supplies
Mixing bowl, whisk, spatula, small container (or bowl, depending on the size of your pudding), rolling pin
Step 1: Ingredients
I tried to take a photo of everything however cannot fit in the whole amount. In this photo it is a smaller scale recipe to get the ingredients in for the reference. I used the actual recipe below and it will yield 4 small Christmas Puddings:
Pudding ingredients:
Dried dates 75g
Dried apricot 75g
Raisin 75g
Walnuts 75g
Candied mixed peel 50g
Unsalted butter, melted or softened 75g
Plain flour 50g
Mixed spice (ground cinnamon, ginger, nutmet) 2 tsp
Bread crumbs 30g
Milk 30ml
Dark rum, Whiskey or Brandy 50ml
Egg 1ea (around 50g net weight)
Decoration ingredients:
Whipped cream or pouring custard 100ml
Green fondant 1 piece about 15g
Corn flour for dusting
Candied pearls red colour, about 10 ea
My mini pudding is about 150g each, and this recipe will yield a perfect 4 portions. You can adjust the amount of recipe depending on the volume of your own mould.
Before I started with the Instructable I wanted to show how to make candied mixed peel as well, but in Australia we're having Christmas in summer and citrus is not in season (in fact they're quite pricy and the peel is quite dry and flavourless at the moment), so I won't have the right ingredients to start with. However in this contest I've seen a perfect tutorial (thanks to Instructable community!) with a really good post on how to make your candied peel. If in your area the citrus is in season, please try to make your own to add a bit more spark to your work.
For the lovely made candied peel tutorial please click here. I also suggest you to use a mixed citrus for the peel -- orange, lemon and lime for the colour and the taste.
Step 2: Prepare Your Dry Ingredients
OK this is the part that requires most work... CHOPPING!
All the big pieces dried fruit and nuts would need to be chopped into smaller pieces. I chopped my dried apricot, dried dates, as well as some big pieces of raisin and the walnuts. 763
However you don't want to use a food processor as it will chop them too fine and will lose bite when you eat the pudding.
Be careful when chopping nuts, don't put your fingers next to the blade just in case they slip.
Now put all the chopped ingredients together and mix them well in a mixing bowl.
Step 3: Mix the Wet Ingredient Into the Dry Ingredient
Now you can put in all the remaining dry ingredients into a bigger mixing bowl -- flour, bread crumbs and mixed spice. You can adjust the amount of spice with how strong you want your pudding to be.
Use a whisk to mix the flour evenly into the nuts and dry fruits. Put in the egg, milk and rum. Please note in this recipe the total amount of liquid is about 120ml-130ml, so if you have extremely large or small egg please adjust your milk accordingly.
Slightly melt your butter and also put in the mixture. Use a whisk to combine everything till it forms a paste.
Step 4: Fill in the Mould
Here you can use any mould that you like. Traditionally people would use a big ceramic bowl, as I'm making some mini ones so I'm using a small stainless steel container as my mould. I also used two silicone egg poachers as my mould and they turned out nicely as well.
Use a piece of butter and rub the butter on the inside of the container. As shown in the picture, the container should be fully covered with a thin layer of butter.
Now you can fill the mould by using a spoon, make sure you press the batter down and leaves no air pockets between each fill. Each of my pudding is around 150g however you can adjust the size depending on your mould or the serving you want.
Step 5: Steam the Pudding!
If your bowl has a cover then that's great, if not then you can use cheese clothes to wrap the top. As I have 4 individual dessert and only 2 pieces of cheese cloth, I used foil cover as a lid. 195