Monday, November 4

Allie’s Christmas Pudding Chronicles: Flambéing and Serving

Christmas is here, and it’s lastly time to light your pudding.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Christmas has a practice of slipping up on me. Regardless of getting ready for this minute for 5 weeks, I still seem like it got here quickly. It’s the last chapter in my six-part series– Allie’s Christmas Pudding Chronicles– and prepared or not, it’s time to flambé a figgy pudding.

I began this expedition in November, on Stir-up Sunday, interested with the joyful custom of a Christmas pudding. If you’re simply signing up with the celebration, Christmas pudding is a spiced cake-like dessert, made up mostly of dried fruit, bread crumbs, sugar, and fat. It’s typically made in the UK and different nations consisting of New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. As an individual born and raised in the United States where dried fruit-laden cakes are frequently mistrusted and the term “pudding” is booked for custards, I was eagerly anticipating appropriately checking out this unknown Christmas reward.

It definitely didn’t dissatisfy. Every action was an experience, from soaking the fruit, steaming it, weekly brandy “feedings,” brandy butter (tough sauce), and now, serving it as a ball of flames. There’s a lot to review in this post. Before you can even think of flambéing, we need to reheat the pudding. Let’s get to it.

Re-steam the pudding

Simply when you believed steaming a dessert for 5 hours appeared oddly extensive, back into the sauna we go. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, likewise called Stir-up Sunday, I blended the batter, put it into a heat-safe glass bowl, covered it in an extremely in-depth style with foil, parchment, and cooking area string, and steamed the pudding in a pot for 5 hours. Well, I needed to steam it once again, however this time for 2 hours rather of 5.

If you’ve been joining me with your own pudding, a couple of hours before you intend on serving the pudding, rewrap the bowl and do the exact same. (Check this post for images on how to cover the bowl and established the cleaner.) The concept of steaming it once again is just to completely reheat the pud without losing wetness. Because the pudding has actually been “treating” for 5 weeks, it’s just natural for it to dry somewhat, even if it’s been well covered and bedaubed with brandy on a weekly basis.

While I have actually checked out that you can unmold the pudding, cover it in foil and pop it in the oven to heat for an hour at 300ºF, or additionally cover it in vented cling wrap and microwave it for 15 minutes, these alternatives can even more dry the pudding, or even worse. (If you’ve ever forgotten a soft roll in the microwave you understand what I imply– mummified.) The cleaner produces a damp environment with mild heat. The method I see it, you put all this operate in currently, why threat destroying it?

As I’ve pointed out in the earlier parts of this series, I’m utilizing Nigella Lawson’s dish as a guide.

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