Christmas Pudding

Christmas Pudding

• 14 Dec 2008

I come from a family that does not celebrate Christmas, so the best part of the day is the food. For our family, Christmas is the one time of the year when all the family gathers under one roof and eats way too much. The best part of the Christmas feast is the pudding. When I was a little girl we used to eat tinned Big Sister pudding topped with custard, then when I was 12 I made my first pudding from a recipe torn from the pages of a women's magazine found in the waiting room of my Mum's surgery.



The following year I bought a pudding basin and made the pudding from the recipe contained in my Margaret Fulton Recipe Book. I cooked so much from that book that it fell apart and I had to purchase another copy - both copies of the book are still at home in Brisbane. We've been making the pudding from the same recipe ever since. I spent one Christmas in Canada when I worked at the Edmonton General Hospital and was horrified to discover that Canadians don't make Christmas pudding! I asked my friends over on Boxing Day and made 6 individual Christmas puddings so I could share the goodness with one and all. The puddings were a roaring success.




Now that I live in Sydney my Dad makes the pudding for Christmas Day but it means once I fly home I can't partake of any of the leftovers and I'm not talking turkey here. I had a brainwave and decided to make some individual puddings just like the ones I made in Canada. The little puddings are wrapped in plastic and stored in the bottom of the fridge waiting until I feel the need for some warm, spicy pudding topped with custard. 



You have no idea how hard it was not to eat the pudding I was photographing. It had literally just come out of the oven and it smelled so good. The only thing that saved the pudding was the knowledge that I was meeting a friend for dinner that night. I did nibble on the red currants though, the first of which appeared in my fruit shop on Saturday. Perfect timing.

Jillian