Vegan Christmas Pudding
You’re making some weird shit this time.
Ingredients
Brandy
Raisins and other kinds of raisins
Panko probably
One Pyrex bowl that hopefully won’t explode
Figs!
Instructions
1. Watch them make Christmas puddings on the Great British Bake-Off and say, “That looks gross,” at the same time as your boyfriend says, “That looks great!”
2. Be unsurprised when he suggests making a pudding for Christmas.
3. Be very surprised when you look up recipes a week before Christmas and learn that a true, traditional Christmas pudding is meant to be mixed up a month in advance and left in a dark cellar to “mature.”
4. Quickly recognize that there will be many more obstacles on your pudding-making journey. (What the hell is candied peel? What are sultanas?) Spend hours discussing whether “bread crumbs” means the same thing for puddings as it does for fried chicken.
Notes: sultanas are golden raisins and candied peel doesn’t exist. Whether Panko is appropriate for Christmas pudding remains a mystery.
5. For the ideal blend of vegan-inclusion, authentic British-ness, and not having a cellar or a month to pickle a pudding, use the BBC recipe for Vegan Christmas Pudding.
7. Gather supplies. As you found, many pudding recipes call for special pudding-making gadgets and molds. If you read the comments on recipes, you will also find that many people’s grandmas made it in an old coffee can. In the spirit of true British peasants soaking their stale bread in brandy to make it edible again, choose to use what you already have available.
Note: What you already have available includes a Pyrex bowl—the exploding kind. Good luck.
8. Begin pudding assembly. There might be a blender involved. Someone probably shaved a whole apple. You’re not sure—you’re mostly on fig-chopping duty. As you work, sing that one Christmas song, but only the line where they say “figgy pudding,” over and over again.
How festive!
9. Watch in awe as your boyfriend casually discovers his God-gift for origami by looking at a few pictures, saying “I think it’s just—” and folding and snipping a piece of parchment paper into the perfect round for the bottom of the pudding bowl.
10. Maneuver, pack, and pat your pudding into its special bowl.
Look how nice it is!
11. Realize you forgot all the sugar. Remove pudding from its special bowl.
Running on Christmas-brain.
12. Replace parchment paper round, repack pudding with sugar included, and wrap it up nice and cozy for whatever weird science/magic the steaming process requires.
This is probably necessary.
13. Lower your twine-wrapped bowl onto balls of crumpled aluminum foil in the bottom of your largest pot, then pour water into the pot. At this point, you’ve stopped caring how much of this is ritual.
What are you even doing
14. You have theorized that if you heat the Pyrex bowl with the water instead of placing the Pyrex bowl directly into heated water, it is probably not going to explode. Regardless, once the lid goes on and the heat goes up, hunker down so you don’t die.
Seems legit.
15. Steam that pudding for four, five hours. Who knows why. You can steam it longer if you want. For a recipe with so many rules, most of the process is just vibes. For the advanced baker, this step may also be a good opportunity to stay home and watch the pudding while your boyfriend goes out to get dinner.
16. It’s done! Remove the pudding from the pot however you are able (this is what the twine was for, but maybe you didn’t do that part right). Invert onto a plate, congratulate yourself, and wrap it up again to trick it into thinking it’s in a cellar.
Those aren’t words. It’s an impression from the parchment round.
It’s so dark. There sure are a lot of potatoes in here.
17. For the full Christmas pudding experience—you’re not steaming shit for five hours without going all the way—make crème anglaise. This part is not vegan, so buy vegan ice cream for those who cannot partake.
18. Crème anglaise has maybe three steps, and it’s apparently essential to get each step exactly right. Twenty minutes into stirring eggs and cream in a skillet, thoroughly debate whether it is still so thin because you didn’t get the cream to the right temperature before adding the eggs, or because you didn’t heat the skillet enough right before transferring the mixture, or because the wind is blowing from the East, or because your thoughts aren’t pure enough.
19. Go lie down on the couch. When you’re done with this step, your boyfriend will have forced the crème anglaise to thicken through sheer will.
You run a finger over the back of the spoon and the line should stay.
20. So, you’re supposed to pour brandy over the pudding and then light it on fire. But you’re not doing that for fear of burning up such a heavy time investment, so just serve it to your boyfriend’s family! Crème anglaise can be poured over a slice or served on the side. Hope to God it doesn’t make them sick.
21. (It won’t. It’s very good. But full of raisins. Don’t eat a lot at once.)
