How To Make A Christmas Pudding - An Uninstructional Guide, Part π

So now we start cooking this cake... or whatever.

Remember last time when I said to start boiling a tea towel? No? Well I did, so do it.

(This does not have to be done on a dirty stove, this is just my preference.)

Step Whatever?: Dust the tea towel with flour and place the cat vomit pudding mix on the towel. Wrap the towel tightly around the pudding mixture and place it in a steaming apparatus.

Step The Next: Steam for Eight Hours while you watch Farscape... I guess you could watch something else, but this is what I'm watching and it didn't have any negative effect on the process.

(I cobbled my apparatus from a poorly engineered steamer)

Step Almost There: Unwrap the tea towel and allow the pudding to dry slightly. Place on a clean, dry tea towel and re wrap. Hang it in a cool dry place for a day. The original recipe claims it can store for something like a month or two - I can't remember exactly - but I'm really not willing to try, what with botulism being a thing that exists.

When you're ready to eat it, boil for Two and a Half Hours then serve. Don't forget to pour Brandy over it and light it on fire. Otherwise, what's the point?

Note: If you want to know the imperial measurements, learn the metric system. This isn't the eighteenth century.

How To Make A Christmas Pudding - An Uninstructional Guide, Part: 2, The Wrath of Khan

 By now you should have been awakened by some shitty person pulling the fire alarm in your building. If you live around decent people I would suggest finding some alternate means of waking yourself up.

Step... Five?: Remove the Orange and Lemon peels. You can chop them small and leave them in if you like them or hate your friends and family enough.

Step Sixty: Add 335 mL of Brown Sugar, 15 mL of All Spice, and  7 mL of Nutmeg.

Step Seventy Seven: Add three lightly beaten eggs and 225 g of Vegetable Shortening. Traditionally, suet is used. Suet is a type of hard beef fat. I prefer to use shortening because I have a lot of vegetarian friends... Oh yeah, and it's a desert and I'm not insane.

Step: 8 E8: Add 185 mL of Self-Raising Flour and 625 mL of Bread Crumbs. You can also add chopped almonds at this point... I guess. Stir the mixture and let sit for 10 minutes to absorb moisture into the bread crumbs.

By this point it should look like cat vomit. Don't worry this is normal... it's English.

While the mixture is sitting I suggest getting a clean tea towel and placing it in a pot of boiling water. This will become clear when we continue in Part Three: The Cookening.

How To Make A Christmas Pudding - An uninstructional Guide, Part: 1

I will teach you to make a traditional English Hamiltonian Christmas pudding.

Step One: Mix raisins, currants, sultanas, mixed fruit, and lemon and Orange rinds. It should be about 800 g, but who the fuck knows I don't own a scale.

Step Two: Add juice of said orange and lemon. Mix in 30 mL of rum you borrowed from your sister (she may add more if you're going to share the pudding with her) and you carried home in a used Pepsi bottle. Also add 125 mL of overpriced brown ale you've had in your fridge forever because you've been saving it for a special occasion which never came.

Step Three: Cover and place in fridge overnight next to your expired tofu and the mac n' cheese you've been living off of for the last three days.

(Becel and heart health do not endorse this blog)

Step Four: Drink the rest of your overpriced ale, you goddamned hipster!

Continued in page in next post...