Sticking to Traditions, come Hell or High Water...

Well, it looks like I'm blogging. This may even get posted, though technically the Thing ain't done yet as it's still cooling off in the kitchen. Still, let's go with it while I have the notion - this may not last.

Christmas. Whatever shape it's taking for you, it seems to be on the way - like a tinselled juggernaut of expectation and Things That Always Happen and traditional family events and so on. For many it's not going to take the shape we thought it would even a few days ago - so here's to the disappointments, the cancelled plans and the overfilled (or critically under catered) kitchens. I hope to 'see' you all on the other side at the next #ConfinedCocktails. I seem to have been overcompensating for something by making lots of flavoured booze this year.

I think my support bubble hasn't collapsed under the weight of new rules, so am probably spending Christmas with my parents still. Though given the number of Londoners carrying a new super-catching version of our friendly neighbourhood virus who crammed on to trains last night to bring the virus northwards to Leeds, maybe not...Cheers for that.

Anyway - Traditions, where they can still be exercised, are very much on my mind and in our family there's really only one Christmas Tradition with a capital T, foodwise. We're not stuck to turkey, we've toyed with beef, and the carnivorous are often outnumbered by the vegetarian in some years. But we have one tradition - born of a general dislike of the dreaded dried fruit that I share with my brothers. I'm not as fanatical about Raisin Hate as my brother, @MetalSamurai, but I'm in no way keen on Christmas Cake or *shudders* Christmas Pudding. I can cope when raisins are in the right place for me, so I eat mincemeat (in a mince pie) and I quite like Border Tart, but scones DO NOT contain raisins. That's just a fact. [I stand by my inconsistency and random approach to where vine fruit belong, or do not belong. Do not @ me.]

So, if only my Dad is likely to enjoy a large serving of Christmas Pudding, what then do you serve? Trifle? - nah. We're so not a custard family, and I'm deeply suspicious of lurking jellied fruit that may turn out to be strawberries. Instead we have the Davidson Family Tradition of Politically Incorrect Chocolate Pudding. It does have another name, but it is so horrifically non-PC and unusable I can't even contemplate linking to it anywhere else. The sort of contemporary language (c.1930s) that makes cataloguing some collections a challenge of context provision and disclaimers. (It still appears under the original name in the Larousse Gastronomique, I think, unless there's been an updated version. It's a traditional recipe - a rich and indulgent interwar pudding that gets a name check in Agatha Christie's The Hollow (if you have an older copy - it might have been edited out in newer editions)). We long ago began referring to it as the Politically Incorrect Chocolate Pudding. Or even just 'the Pudding', to be fair. There can be only one....

The original recipe I use came to my mother in the 1970s in a letter from her friend, Spuff (a.k.a. Elspeth), a former flatmate from student days. The letter, on chocolate-stained blue writing paper, used to live in the cookbook stand in my parent's kitchen all year round. It was dug out from between bits cut out of magazines and money off vouchers every year. I can't remember when I became the official Pudding Maker...I've certainly been doing it most years out of the last 20, if I'm going home. Or maybe it's more like 30 now...? But it became the Thing I made every family Christmas, sometimes in my own kitchen and ferried home via train or hire car, sometimes in my mum's kitchen. My own copy is scribbled in a couple of places, but most recently on an index card, tucked into my folder of key recipes.

The Recipe

Ingredients - mostly indulgent

I'm not sure if the recipe is quite visible in that image, so here it is written out - 2 sizes: 'full' and 'smaller' in brackets:

Beat 1/2 lb (5 1/2 oz) butter (unsalted, room temperature) with 6 oz (4oz) caster sugar. Beat in 6 (4) eggs alternately with 1 (2/3s) cup [US cup btw!] cocoa. Add vanilla essence [it was the 70s - go with extract these days] and rum/brandy.

Line pudding bowl top. Steam in bain marie - original recipe says 50 mins (lie!!) - do till 50p sized gloopy bit remains on pudding top(just set). Turn off heat, leave to cool in water. Chill. Serve with cream or crème fraÎche.

It's not complicated, no whipped egg whites or folding or otherwise complex manoeuvres but I do have a number of learned tips that live in my head and aren't really written down anywhere.

This is a cold pudding- make it a few days in advance and it's even better. Really.
Use unsalted butter (yeah, seems obvious but the year my younger brother made it he used salted by default and complained it didn't say which in the recipe. Brothers).
It's mostly imperial measurements (it was the 70s), but all cups are US cups because that's my family for you.
Make sure your butter is room temperature, otherwise it doesn't blend in and your pudding will have buttery flecks.
I usually use medium eggs as that's what I have. I don't think large will make a difference if that's what you have.
The cocoa matters. Use something decent, I quite like Green & Black's though I used Lidl this year - topped up with 1tbspn grated Venezuelan Black Cacao.
The booze is optional or varied. I've used rum, brandy, cointreau. This year I used Marsala. I measure by eye but about a tablespoon, whatever the size you make.
The original recipe calls for vanilla essence as it was the 1970s. Culinary times were hard. Use a decent extract, about 1/4-1/2 teaspoon, depending.
You can do it by hand, but I use the Kenwood mixer (K beater) which romps through it.
BUTTER THE PUDDING BOWL. Or oil it. And put a circle of baking parchment in the base of it. Learn from my mishaps!
Cream the butter/sugar until 'light and fluffy', then add in an egg and a large spoon of cocoa, mix, then go again with another egg & cocoa spoon. Carry on till you run out of eggs and cocoa.
Make sure your batter is all mixed and smooth and chocolatey. Watch out for lumps of buttery sugar not incorporated.
Pudding bowl size varies. I tend to use a 2pt one for all sizes as I don't have a 1pt bowl and a 1/2 pt is too small. You do need a bit of headroom in it. It doesn't rise, but it sort of...expands...in the heat, before shrinking back down as it cools, so whatever gives you about an inch of room below the lid.
I use the Big Pot to cook it. Sitting on a trivet I bought 30 years ago in an Ironmonger in Leith (for this pudding!). You're not really steaming it, you're setting it in a large bain marie of simmering water.
You could absolutely use a slow cooker as a bain marie for this - mine's just too small to take a pudding bowl.
Keep the kettle full and ready to top up with boiling water - ideally it works best if the water level stays level with the pudding batter level in the bowl.
Never attempt to microwave it. This is not a suet-based steamed pudding (which love a microwave) and you'll end up with scrambled eggs. (It was worth an experiment...never again).
Timing. Yeah. The version Spuff sent said 'steam 50 mins' which is a TOTAL LIE. I've never done it that quickly, even when doing a half amount. I did half the recipe today (4 oz butter, 3 eggs) and it took at least 1 1/2 hours to get to my favoured 'leaving point'.
I usually give it 45 mins (smaller) or 1 hour (larger) then start checking for signs every 15 mins or so till it hits my preferred sweet spot...
...which is. When the outer edges of the pudding top are clearly set (and matte looking) but there's still a spot right in the middle that's semi-set and glossy looking, about the size of an (old!) 50p piece.
Then I turn the heat off and leave it to cool down slowly in the increasingly tepid water.
When the water's cold, take it out. Dry off the outside of the bowl and pop it in the fridge.
To 'de-bowl' the pudding - run the outside of the bowl sides under a hot tap (my mum does this, so I do this. Pudding Lore.), then run round the outside of the pudding with a flexible palette knife. Then stick a plate over the top of the bowl, upend and hope it plops out in one piece.
Serve with cream, crème fraÎche, my mum's foaming brandy sauce...don't custard it. It really doesn't need custard on top of all that butter.
It is really, really rich. You may think the serving is small (I've served 10 with the large version - I'm serving 4 with the 4oz/3 egg version and I expect leftovers).
It's also not necessarily a children's pudding? It's quite dark, so some kids find it not what they expected from a chocolate pudding. Having said that, all the kids in our family demand it and we all loved it as kids.
The batter left in the bowl does have raw eggs in it, so maybe licking the spoon is not safe, but I've been licking this batter off Kenwood K-beaters since I was 5 and I'm not dead yet!

So there we are. The PI Chocolate Pudding, and 30+ years of learned Pudding Craft. This year I'm making two. One to deliver to my younger brother's family in Wakefield in a safe & socially distant manner on the street, one to take to my parents. The Pudding rides again for 2020, undaunted!

Have some process photos...