Day 1 – Put fruit to soak.
Day 2 – discover missing Bramley apples. Resolve to buy them.
Day 3 – forget apples.
Day 4 – ditto.
Day 5 – realise there are still half a dozen big fat apples on the Bramley tree at the bottom of the garden. Go scrumping for apples and return with a couple of beauties. Then discover there isn’t any stem ginger in syrup.
Day 6 – forget to buy stem ginger.
Day 7 – discover local shops don’t stock stem ginger.
Day 8 – finally remember to ask DH to buy stem ginger in town. Commence assembly of xmas puddings. Peel apples, add to ginger and bread crumbs and flour and sugar and fruit that’s been soaking in probably a touch more brandy than originally called for for over a week. Mix it all up whilst singing ‘we wish you a Merry Christmas’. Smile at eldest’s complaint of “Mom, you never let us sing carols before December!”. Ladle odd looking mixture into one large pudding basin, one medium pudding basin and discover there’s enough left over for four little ramekin basins. Do fiddly irritating bit with concertinaed baking paper and some dishcloth knitting cotton as the string has vanished. Put large pudding in pressure cooker (only pan tall enough) and medium pudding with three orbiting small ones in wide pasta pan. Begin boiling.
Twenty minutes later, go to make a cup of tea and ponder briefly on the existence of six eggs sat in a bowl on the counter.
Panic. Haul steaming hot pudding basins out of hot water, tip warm mixture back into large mixing bowl (which thankfully hadn’t ended up int he dishwasher) from large and middle sized bowls, as well as single small bowl that never made it into a pan, stir like crazy to cool slightly before adding the beaten eggs. Stir some more, discovering that the mixture actually looks like it’s supposed to now. You know, kind of, well, cake like.
Repeat irritating fiddly bit with baking paper and string/yarn stuff and drop pudding basins back into hot water. Make tea and congratulate self on getting out of that one with nothing more than a few minor scalds. The three little puddings will be taste tests, ie, eggless xmas pudding. Will cook the small one avec egg and do a blind test on unsuspecting bloke. 🙂
So yeah, tea. And chocolate. And no more bloody Christmas carols until December, okay?