This Christmas pudding recipe is a glorious beauty crowned with pecans and glacé cherries. It's guaranteed to impress at the end of your festive lunch or dinner.
Topped with pecans and cherries this Christmas pudding will looking stunning when served on Christmas day.
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Yields:
10 serving(s)
Prep Time:
20 mins
Cook Time:
4 hrs
Total Time:
4 hrs 20 mins
Cal/Serv:
298
Ingredients
For the pudding
60g
(2½oz) glacé cherries, chopped
150g
(5oz) sultanas
50g
(2oz) each dried prunes and dried apricots, roughly chopped
50g (2oz) mixed peel
Zest and juice of ½ a medium orange
50ml
(2fl oz) sweet cream sherry or port
40g
(1½oz) butter, chilled and grated, plus extra to grease
50g
(2oz) pecans, roughly chopped
100g
(3½oz) dark muscovado sugar
25ml
(1fl oz) single cream
50g
(2oz) each plain flour and breadcrumbs
1tsp.
each ground cinnamon and mixed spice
1
medium egg, beaten
For the topping (optional)
100g
(3½oz) whole glacé cherries
½ tbsp brandy, whisky or rum
50g
(2oz) golden syrup
25g
(1oz) pecan nuts
Directions
Step 1
To make the pudding, put the cherries, dried fruit and mixed peel into a large non-metallic mixing bowl and stir in the orange zest and juice and alcohol. Cover and leave to soak overnight, stirring when you can.
Step 2
Lightly butter a 1 litre (1¾ pint) pudding basin and line the base with a disc of baking parchment. Put a 35.5cm (14in) square of foil on top of a square of baking parchment of the same size. Fold a 4cm (1½in) pleat across the centre and set aside.
Step 3
If making the topping, put all the topping ingredients into a small pan. Bring to the boil, then remove from the heat and tip the syrupy mixture into the prepared basin, ensuring the base is evenly covered with the cherries and pecans.
Step 4
Stir remaining pudding ingredients into soaked fruit mixture, then spoon into prepared basin (be careful not to disturb the topping layer), pushing down gently. Level the surface. Put the pleated foil and parchment square (foil-side up) on top of basin and smooth down to cover. Using a long piece of string, tie securely under the lip of the basin, then loop over and tie to make a handle.
Step 5
To cook, put a heatproof saucer in the base of a large, deep pan. Lower in prepared pudding and pour in enough water (trying not to get any on top of pudding) to come halfway up sides of basin. Cover pan with a tight-fitting lid, bring water to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer gently for 4hr, topping up water as necessary. Remove pudding from pan and cool completely.
Step 6
When cool, wrap the basin, still with its foil lid, tightly in clingfilm and then another layer of foil. Store in a cool, dark place for up to three months.
To reheat your pudding: Remove the top layer of foil, the clingfilm and pleated lid. Re-cover the top of the basin with a baking parchment and foil lid as before. Using the instructions in step 5, re-heat for 1½hr.
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
