Like SamHenry, my maternal Grandmother was also from Britain. She was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1885 and moved to London where she resided until the end of World War 1.
At the end of the “war to end all wars”, she married my Grandfather and moved to the United States, bringing along her recipe box filled with instructions for preparing traditional English fare.
Every Christmas my Grandmother would spend days & days in the kitchen, baking cookies, fruit cakes & plum pudding as gifts for her family and friends.
Plum pudding was traditionally made in a “bag” & hung for weeks prior to Christmas to enhance the flavor. By the time I came on the scene, my Grandmother had adopted the pudding can* since she liked to make several small puddings to give away as presents.
You can’t get much more traditional English fare at the Christmas holiday than than a good plum pudding.
Mo’s Plum Pudding
INGREDIENTS:
- 3 cups sifted flour
- 1 TSP. baking powder
- 1 TSP. salt
- 1 TSP. cloves
- 1 TSP. all spice
- 1 TSP. nutmeg
- 2 TSP. cinnamon
- 1/2 TSP. ginger
- 1 package brown sugar
- 1 # chopped beef (suet)
- 1 package currants
- 2 # seedless grapes
- 1 package seeded raisins
- 1 # chopped, mixed peel
- slivered almonds, blanched
- 6 beaten eggs
- 1 can apple sauce
- 1 TSP. molasses
- 1 TSP. almond extract, grated lemon rinds or essence of lemon
- 1 cup of broth. Can be water, cider or fruit juice
PREPARATION:
- Mix all ingredients together
- Grease bottoms and sides of pudding cans*
- Put wax paper in bottom of cans
- Fill cans with mixture and cover top with wax paper
- Steam for about 6 hours or more in roasting pan, with water halfway up side of cans
- Add boiling water about every hour
- Remove from water, place on rack and leave covers off cans overnight
*Don’t have any “pudding cans”? Wash & save a few empty soup cans from your kitchen. Recycle – that’s what your Grandma did!
posted by Mountain Republic recipe by Amy Chenevert
At Grandma's Table 