Best Yule Tide recipes

[doofaloofa]

Share your cake, pud, mince pie etc recipes

anything seasonal

[Green Aura]

My sourdough Christmas cake is on the main blog site, doofa. I can highly recommend it.

My attempts at Christmas pudding have all been unpleasant. It needs to be vegan for my gal but I haven't found a decent recipe yet. Strangely T*sco's cheap brand is vegan and pretty tasty so I haven't bothered recently but I'd be interested to see any recipes.

Other than that we don't do anything particularly Christmas. We just basically have a slightly posher sunday lunch - posher in the sense that I'll ad bread sauce and maybe cranberry or apple sauce. And we have a starter and a pudding which in itself is a festive treat.

[diggernotdreamer]

The only thing I do really is mincemeat, the Wizard orders about 5 dozen mince pies, along with 5 dozen sausage rolls every year. I don't really have a recipe, I just chuck in sultana's then an equal amount to the sultana's of currants and raisins, grated apple, maybe the juice and zest of oranges and lemons, cranberries, sugar, grated apple, lots of mixed spice and either rum or brandy to soak the fruits first and then another good glug, glug, glug, glug when I put in the other stuff and then put it into a kilner jar which I turn over every day. I make an all butter sweet pastry which is brought together with an egg which makes them a bit special too.

[Brewtrog]

Not had to do too much Christmas cooking, but love hassleback potatoes, put a skewer through the bottom of a potato, then cut streaks through the spud, sotht its like a load of crisps still connected then coat in butter and throw in the oven gas 6.

[Flo]

The season is cancelled if it involves cooking!

[Odsox]

My attempts at Christmas pudding have all been unpleasant. It needs to be vegan for my gal but I haven't found a decent recipe yet

I used to make a vegetarian Christmas pudding, not because I'm vegetarian but because I don't like suet (thanks to primary school dinners which featured suet pudding nearly every day)
It's chock full of dried fruit and nuts and has butter instead of suet, but I'm sure margarine or even coconut oil would be OK.
It does have eggs in it though.

[Flo]

Maggie, even I can make this one and it gets eaten!
Christmas Pudding
Ingredients
• 2oz butter
• 1 cup flour
• 0.5 cup brown sugar
• 0.5 cup syrup
• 2 tspns baking powder
• Pinch Salt
• 0.5 tspns ground nutmeg
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• 2 cups fresh breadcrumbs
• 0.5 cups grated carrot
• 8 ozs currants
• 8 ozs sultanas
• 8 ozs seedless raisins
• 1 tspn bi-carb dissolved in half cup warm water
• 4 oz chopped mixed candied peel
• 1 tspn coffee essence or instant coffee
• Nuts and cherries if desired

Method
1. Wash and dry fruit well
2. Beat butter, sugar and syrup well together
3. Add breadcrumbs, carrots, spices and salt
4. Mix thoroughly
5. Add bi-carb, water and flour
6. Mix in the fruit and add a little milk if the mixture is too stiff
7. Place in a greased pudding mould, cover with greaseproof paper and tie over a clean cloth
8. Steam for 3 hours.
9. Keep in refrigerator until required
10. Then steam again for 2 hours

[Green Aura]

I'm sure I replied to this earlier!

Looks good, Flo, I'll try it out. My recipe turned out very gritty and I can't work out why - we usually use wholemeal for everything so why it should be a problem in Christmas pud I don't know. I'll invest in some plain flour and use white breadcrumbs and see if that makes the difference.

I did wonder if the lack of eggs was part of the problem, Tony,but we've managed to get round that successfully elsewhere.

I use Delia Smith's baked Mincemeat recipe. Although I'm generally not a big fan of her stuff this recipe has never failed me and is delicious.

[Flo]

Definitely plain flour in that Yule pud, colour of breadcrumbs really doesn't matter here.