Does DIY include making Xmas puddings?

I doubt it makes a noticeable difference.

Not answering your question, and not DIY (cooking or otherwise) but the supermarkets do excellent Xmas puds and Xmas cake these days. I can't speak for all of them, but we get Tesco 'Finest' of both, usually two or three puds at a time and save them for the following years. SWMBO used to make them, but she's no longer able to cook these days, and it's just so much simpler. Unless you are absolutely sold on the idea of making your own and you think your cooking skills are up to doing it, then in your situation I would think it well worth considering.

Either, but wholemeal is more likely to stand up to the weight of the fruit and give a lighter but more fibrous texture.

You can buy a ready made cake, inject it with alcohol, and then cover it with ready to roll fondant icing.

Owain

got excellent bread making advice from this group some years ago.

store cupboard for something, I happened to notice there were no xmas pudd ings for this year. Dad will have to set to!

quired, so I hunted out the card for the recipe handed down over several ge nerations. Seems simple enough apart from managing the 8 hours steaming. But it uses breadcrumbs - is there a guru here who knows if this can be who lemeal or does it have to be white bread ?

Either type of breadcrumb works. As with any recipe, make it before you nee d it, then you've at least got the chance to work out why it went wrong.

NT

In message , Rob Graham writes

Rob, my sympathy.

Getting to practicalities, when I say 'we', my function is mainly chief washer-upper etc., but we make bread crumbs from white bread (my job), and use them for puddings and bread sauce, without which no Christmas dinner is complete.

Regarding the steamer, we just use the type which sits on top of an ordinary saucepan, and works perfectly. Exactly as used by my mother and grandmother.

Re the cake, that is no more difficult than pudding, the only hard part being mixing and stirring the thick, gloopy mixture. If the thought of cake decorating puts you off, think simple. We sprinkle the cake with icing sugar, wrap a pretty Christmas band around the cake and decorate the top with a few plastic bits. Snow man, holly, Father Christmas. We don't bother with traditional icing and marzipan, as none of us are great fans. The important part is the cake itself.

Bigger decision here is whether to add nuts. That said, it is white bread, allowed to go stale for convenient mechanised crumbling. I suspect crumbed bread can be purchased?

It can.

Not cheap though.

I buy Japanese breadcrumbs ("panko") in bulk (500g bags) from the oriental supermarket and keep them (and use them direct from) in the freezer.

My grandmother used to make the family Christmas puddings, but she died over 20 years ago. There were a couple in stock we used for the following 2 years, but since then, I buy them (usually in a sale after the previous Christmas as they keep forever), and from about a month before Christmas, I regularly water with a suitable brandy or whatever is to hand. That works really well. I flambé them on the day too with hot bandy poured over.

Me too. A lot of people don't know how to do it properly, I have made sure that all my children watch and learn from an early age!

(Both for effect and for safety).

IMNHO the Tesco "Finest" puddings have, like Usenet, too many nuts.

If you go that route make sure you buy "fresh" breadcrumbs. But they are really easy to make from an unsliced white loaf.

the breadcrumbs make it lighter than it would be with flour alone. Wholemeal will make it heavier. So both possible but the wholemeal is a bit "Grand Old Duke of York" :)

Don't confuse it with packet breadcrumbs (golden or otherwise) which don't seem to have been made from any kind of bread.

Just buy breadcrumbs ready made. Personally I think some of the factory ones can be very good and save a lot of effort. Microwaving your own reduces the cooking time to about 20 minutes IME. Suet dumplings take about 3 minutes in a microwave and come out very light.

My Mother used to wait till Dad brought the Granite field roller down the concrete section of the farmyard, A few dried out loaves wrapped in a clean tea towel put in the way were reduced to a years supply of breadcrumbs in seconds. On a DIY theme those days being long past the roller has been re purposed and forms the upright supports for the alcove that contains my brothers wood burner.

G.Harman

I agree. They lose an essential puddingyness trying to be too luxurious.

Many thanks guys; the fact that there were so many replies make me wonder i f you are all passed 'school' age and are now retired folks who have fond m emories of mothers / grannies / etc., stirring the puddings and offering yo u stir and to make a wish!

My interpretation of the posts is that wholemeal crumbs would work but migh t make the puddings even heavier. I appreciate the poster who said that wi th flour the puddings would be very solid and hence the use of bread crumbs - an explanation.

The reference to a query on bread making some years ago was a frustration m y wife was having with her bread maker at that time - so I asked here, expe cting to be told to go to a specific forum, and ended up with thread some 9