6 Puddings You Hear A Lot About During The Holidays (2024)
It seems like you can’t read a Yuletide tale or sing a carol without the mention of one particular pudding or another. But just where do these festive desserts come from and what’s inside of them?
We decided to uncover some of December’s sweetest treats that you’ve undoubtedly heard about, even if you’ve never seen or tasted them. So let’s get the most obvious one out of the way first.
1. Christmas Pudding
We start with the grandaddy of all December delectables: the appropriately named Christmas pudding. Also known as plum pudding, this dish is a staple of British Christmas dinner but has become popular in several of their former colonies as well.
This magical blend of molasses (called treacle in Britain), sugar, spices, and suet (i.e. cow fat) gets steamed and then covered in brandy before being set on fire as a popular holiday centerpiece.
“Now bring us some figgy pudding” is the well-known refrain of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas." So, here it is.
This seasonal favorite is essentially the same as a Christmas pudding but with the sweet addition of – wait for it – figs. It’s a perfect twist on the classic flavor and allows you to maintain the flaming pizzazz of the original.
3. Black Pudding
If you’re on the subject of puddings this holiday season, you might do yourself and your loved ones a favor and skip over black pudding. While it’s pretty standard breakfast staple in several European countries, blood sausage is still a hard sell in America.
Using dried pigs blood, barley or oatmeal, and a blend of spices, wheat flour, and hog fats, this conspicuously colored “pudding” is an excellent source of iron—but a terrible choice for holiday cheer.
4. Bread Pudding
This dessert is one pudding that has made its way stateside, and we’re all the better for it. Mixing stale bread in a suspension of milk, cream, eggs, and butter makes this dish equal parts creamy and hearty. Throw in sugar and spice and dried fruit (esp. raisins) and you’ve got a winning combination.
5. Banana Pudding
If you’re hearing this request, it’s probably from a toddler, and he or she probably wants the instant variety served with a few Nilla Wafers. But the fancy-pants, original concoction is no slouch either.
First off, the pudding should be sweet vanilla flavored custard separated by layers of ladyfinger or vanilla wafer cookies topped with fresh sliced bananas and whipped cream or meringue. It’s enough to make you go ape!
6. Sticky Toffee Pudding
Again, the English have very different definition of pudding. Or maybe we do. Like the Christmas pudding and figgy puddings before it, the sticky toffee pudding is usually steamed for maximum moisture.
Instead of figs, however, very finely chopped dates are added to the cake, which gets covered in a toffee sauce. And, yes, toffee sauce is the warm, liquid, org*sm-in-your-mouth flavor of melted British toffee. Custard and ice cream are optional additions but come highly recommended.
It's made with alcohol and dried fruit and is a traditional English dessert. It's more like a cake than what Americans think of as a soft, custard-like pudding. Figgy pudding is also known as Christmas pudding or plum pudding.
These charms, among others, are a donkey, a little duck, piggie, belle (a bell), imp and spoon. A special set of plum pudding and cake jewellery for lucky charms includes a swastika (long life), bell (marriage), coin (fortune yours), piggie (good luck), bogey man (be happy) and lucky shoe.
It was common practice to include small silver coins in the pudding mixture, which could be kept by the person whose serving included them. The usual choice was a silver threepence or a sixpence.
You can't get through the Christmas season without hearing about it, but have you ever stopped wondering what figgy pudding is? In Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, you read that Mrs. Cratchit proudly presented to her guests her Christmas pudding, resembling a speckled cannonball.
Christmas pudding is also called figgy pudding and plum pudding. It's not made with plums, however. It's made with raisins, which were called plums in the Victorian era. Most recipes suggest soaking the raisins in brandy overnight, which I did.
It's said that Christmas pudding needs to be prepared with 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and his twelve disciples. Every family member stirs it in turn from east to west to honour their journey. Historically, Christmas pudding wasn't even considered to be a dessert.
Well Christmas pudding (also called plum pudding, Christmas pudd or Christmas pud) is traditionally the main dessert served with Christmas dinner in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and other countries, but it's origins are very much British. Plum pudding is a very rich dessert which is boiled or steamed.
We throw away 263,000 turkeys. We throw away 7.5 million mince pies. We also bin 740,000 portions of Christmas pudding. This year we are expected to consume 25 million Christmas puddings all wrapped in plastic or cardboard.
Luscious Christmas pudding comes with a mixture of chopped nuts, like walnuts, pecan nuts, almonds and hazelnuts. These nuts are very rich in protein, vitamin E and dietary fibres. Almonds consumption, for instance, can significantly bring down LDL cholesterol levels and decreases the risk of heart diseases.
It is believed that a Christmas pudding must contain thirteen ingredients. These ingredients each represent Jesus and each of his twelve disciples. Traditionally, brandy is poured over the Christmas pudding and set aflame before serving. The flames are believed to represent Christ's passion.
The thirteen desserts (Occitan: lei tretze dessèrts) are the traditional dessert foods used to celebrate Christmas in the French region of Provence. The "big supper" (le gros souper) ends with a ritual 13 desserts, representing Jesus Christ and the 12 apostles.
Much like a “full breakfast,” Mervis says the ingredients used in figgy pudding can often be a source of contention, but the dish is typically made with dried fruit (traditionally raisins, sultanas, currants and figs), brown sugar or treacle, mixed spices, breadcrumbs, suet, eggs, and alcohol (often brandy, sherry or ...
The interesting thing is, plum pudding does not contain any plum! This goes back to the Victorian practice of substituting dried plums with other dried fruits, such as raisins. Dried plums or prunes were so popular that any goods which contained dried fruits were referred to 'plum cakes' or 'plum puddings'.
Dinner at Cratchit's house ends with a traditional Christmas pudding, which Dickens describes as “a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.” Sometimes called plum pudding, Christmas pudding is made with dried ...
Firstly in this extract Dickens presents the cratchit family as cheerful, the quote “Oh, a wonderful pudding” this shows that even though they are poor they are still cheerful, Dickens then presents the family as happy and blessed “A merry christmas to us all, my dears, god bless us” this shows that the family wish to ...
Introduction: My name is Frankie Dare, I am a funny, beautiful, proud, fair, pleasant, cheerful, enthusiastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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