Chocolate Salted Caramel Christmas Pudding

Chocolate Salted Caramel Christmas Pudding - scroll down for the full recipe. Read on to find out how I developed the idea and created the melting middle.....

Stir-Up Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent begins and when families traditionally make their Christmas pudding. The idea is that everyone has a go at stirring the mixture and making a wish.

 

For any non-UK readers the idea of Christmas pudding might seem a bit strange. It’s actually a cake of sorts, but steamed rather than baked. It contains dried fruit, spices like cinnamon and ginger, and alcohol – the fruit is often soaked in brandy, and traditionally when the pudding is served, brandy is poured over the top and set alight.

 

I’ve never actually made a Christmas pudding before so when I was asked by Waitrose to come up with a recipe for a Christmas pudding with a twist, I was a little daunted. But I like a challenge, and more importantly the excuse to finally have a go at making a Christmas pudding, even if it wasn’t going to be a traditional one.

 

My recipe turned out really well; whether you make this or follow your great-grandmother’s recipe that has been handed down through the years, don’t forget that November 22 is Stir-Up Sunday! And if you forget, or don’t have time, then get yourself down to Waitrose and buy one of their Christmas puddings!

 

Thinking about what kind of twist I could add prompted several ideas, ranging from Christmas pudding cake pops to adding something like orange and Cointreau to the pudding mixture. When I was younger I didn’t particularly like Christmas pudding with all the fruit and would still prefer a chocolate cake to a fruit cake any day… which gave me an idea and I decided to make a chocolate Christmas pudding. But not just stop there: one of my favourite flavours is salted caramel, and I love melting middle puddings where you cut into it and the runny filling oozes out…. I wondered if it was possible to do that in a Christmas pudding given the extended baking time (up to 5 hours). Well, it turns out that it is! Just about, anyway… but I felt my Christmas pudding with a twist was a resounding success (and the results of the taste test were very positive).
 

I knew the challenge would be what to put in the middle that wouldn’t bake into the cake and would remain liquid – or rather, turn to liquid when heated. As I wanted to use salted caramel, I decided to see if Waitrose sold anything I could use- and they had a packet of Hope & Greenwood Salted Caramel Fudge, which I thought would be perfect.

  

I thought it would probably melt pretty fast though so I put the fudge in the freezer for a few hours, before baking it into the middle of my Christmas pudding. When the pudding was served, I cut into it, and there was actually some liquid caramel in the middle! There were also some chunky pieces of soft fudge which you can see in these photos.
 

 

  

Christmas pudding is traditionally served with brandy butter which I’ve never particularly liked, so instead I served it with Waitrose’s Seriously Caramel dipping sauce. You can of course make your own sauce but this is much easier!

  

Here’s the recipe in full:

 

Chocolate and Salted Caramel Christmas Pudding – an original recipe by Caroline Makes

100g raisins

100g sultanas

75g self raising flour

40g cocoa powder

100g breadcrumbs

100g light brown sugar

100g dates, chopped

100g glace cherries, chopped

100g ground almonds

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

100g Lindt chocolate with salted caramel, chopped

50g butter, grated

75ml milk - I wanted to use buttermilk but it was out of stock when my online order came

1 egg

75ml brandy- I used Torres 10 from Waitrose

150g Hope and Greenwood salt caramel fudge

to serve: salted caramel sauce

 

First, take the fudge out of the box and put the plastic bag in the freezer for at least 2 hours, or longer.

 

Preheat oven to 170C and grease a 1.5- 2 litre pudding basin that you can put in the oven.

 

Mix the dry ingredients apart from the fudge in a large bowl: the raisins, sultanas, flour, cocoa powder, breadcrumbs, sugar, dates, cherries, ground almonds, cinnamon and nutmeg and chopped chocolate. Stir well to combine.

 

Sprinkle the grated butter over the top and stir well to combine.

 

Beat the egg and add it to the milk and mix together. Add the brandy to the milk and pour into the dry ingredients. Stir until everything is combined and you have a sticky, fruity - and quite lumpy - mixture.

 

Spoon a little of the pudding mixture into your pudding basin so the bottom is covered, then pile the frozen fudge on top. Carefully spoon the rest of the mixture around and on top of the fudge so it is totally covered.

 

If your pudding basin has a lid place this on top; if not - as mine didn't - cover with two layers of clingfilm and then two layers of foil. Boil the kettle.

 

Place the bowl in a roasting tray or similar pan you can put in the oven and pour in boiling water until it comes half way up the side of the pudding basin - or fills your roasting tray. You may need to boil the kettle twice. You may find it easier to part fill the roasting tin, then carry it to the oven, then top up the water while it is already in the oven.

 

Steam in the oven for 4 and a half hours. Check it once or twice during that time to see if the water in the roasting pan needs topping up.

 

When cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool; be careful when you remove the lid or particularly if you have used clingfilm as steam will escape.

 

When the bowl is cool enough to handle, turn the pudding out on a plate. Serve with caramel sauce and look for the hidden caramel inside!

You can see other ideas for Christmas pudding with a twist here.

 

Thanks to Waitrose for covering the cost of the ingredients.

 

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Slimming World Nacho-Style Feast

I’ve cooked a fair bit of Mexican food recently and had been meaning to make this dish for a long time, ever since I saw it in a Primula cheese ad in a Slimming World magazine.

 

For anyone who hasn’t come across Primula before – it was a staple of my childhood in the 80s, but is still around – it’s a soft cheese that comes in a tube like toothpaste. It has a much stronger flavour than cream cheeses like Philadelphia, and they make various versions flavoured with chives, shrimp and so on. It’s made from Gouda and Cheddar apparently – I discovered a fun animation on the company’s website about how it’s made.
 

The thing I like best about Primula though – aside from the fun of squeezing the tube – is that a large part of the company’s profits go to charity. You can read more about that on their website (note – this is not a sponsored post or written at the company’s request).

 

Primula is the suggested ingredient in this particular Slimming World recipe, I think partly because Primula is low in “syns”, though you could actually use any cheese for it. You can view the full recipe here, so I won’t repeat it.

 

I wanted to make my own potato wedges but my fiancé only likes the shop-bought kind for some reason so I used those, and left out the optional jalapenos.

The meal turned out pretty well - there was a tiny bit too much liquid in the bottom, but it's a good way to serve mince if you are looking for something different.

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USA Travel Reviews: Atlanta, Georgia

The USA is not simply one destination to visit – each state has its own identify and there is so much to see and do. I’ve been lucky enough to visit the US several times – I’ve now been to 21 of the 50 states – and recently took another holiday with my fiancé and his mum which began in Atlanta and ended in Chicago, by way of Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans.

 

I love to talk about (and photograph!) the food that I ate and the places I stayed, so this is a part restaurant review, part travelogue with hopefully a few nice photos as well – though the emphasis is mainly on the restaurants and hotels/B&Bs rather than a “what I did on my holidays” post. I hope you enjoy reading!

 

Atlanta, Georgia

 

The Social Goat B&B, Atlanta

 

 

We flew into Atlanta in time for DragonCon, the world’s largest sci-fi and fantasy convention. That wasn’t our intention but I ended up wishing we did have tickets for the event! We stayed in a lovely B&B called the Social Goat (they did indeed have goats, and more) and found that all the other guests were there for DragonCon, which made for a very interesting conversation over breakfast one day and then an opportunity to see their impressive handmade costumes and take some photos.

 

The B&B is just on the outskirts of Atlanta, near Grant Park and the Zoo; it only took about 15 minutes to get into the centre of town by car (if you are on holiday in America I highly recommend using Uber taxis!). Surprisingly for being so close to the centre of a big city, on this B&B you feel like you are in the countryside. You can sit on the front porch of the house and watch the animals in the yard – there were goats, chickens, ducks, and cats.

 

Our room was very comfortable (once we’d shifted one of the cats, Monkey, who wanted to sleep on our bed – and he’s huge, so took up most of the bed!) I did notice the bed was quite high, something I found in most of the B&Bs we stayed across the South – one owner told me that it stems from the days when windows had to be higher off the ground and so the beds were higher so you could see out. I also find these sort of rooms very dark – the dark wood and lack of an overhead light (there are lamps instead, but never enough for my liking) means I often feel like I’m straining my eyes.

 

The Social Goat was lovely though – there are two living rooms near the open-plan kitchen where we could sit on the sofas and read and the owner, Christy, was lovely – she insisted on driving us to a restaurant on our first night so we wouldn’t have to get a taxi.

 

 

Breakfast was very good – though it is served between set times and one day we had the brightest yellow eggs - they have chickens as you can see, who wandered into the kitchen one morning when they wanted their breakfast! We had to leave too early on our second and final day so missed breakfast. Christy was roasting peach slices in the oven and let me try one even though breakfast wasn’t quite ready – it was lovely! But we had to get to Nashville via the Jack Daniels distillery in time for a show at the Grand Ole Opry that evening.

 

 

Dakota Blue

 

 

Pretty jet lagged after a fairly long flight, we just about managed to stay awake until dinner time (local time that is) and after looking at a few menus provided by our B&B settled on the nearby Dakota Blue. It’s in a nice neighbourhood by Grant Park near the zoo and is an informal place popular with families with fairly basic décor, but friendly service - I forgot how you get refills on soft drinks before you have even finished them in the US!

 

 

I wanted food that was relatively plain and wasn’t hugely hungry because my body clock was telling me I should be asleep. I spotted a Cuban sandwich on the menu, which I’d never had other than the one I made myself after seeing the movie Chef, which also came in a smaller size (a half Cuban) so I ordered that with a side of Tater Tots – not realising the side dish would be huge. The Tater Tots were very bland and a bit greasy and would have been much nicer with some sort of sauce (I don’t like ketchup so I mean something like a cheese sauce). The Cuban sandwich was good but I didn’t think it was all that special though it was huge so only order the full size sandwich if you are really, really hungry! The bill was pretty cheap and came in at 40 dollars including a 20pc tip for the three of us!

 

Georgia Aquarium

 

Just a few lines to say this is well worth a visit, with some impressive exhibits (if it’s right to call the fish and mammals an exhibit) and the dolphin show is excellent.

 

We had lunch here having arrived much later at the aquarium than expected (as we were taking photos of DragonCon costumes in the morning!). There were a couple of places to eat but as we were passing the main cafeteria and it didn’t look too busy we went there. There wasn’t a huge choice of food but there were some hot dishes which were probably designed to appeal more to children but I really fancied the chicken goujons and a side of macaroni cheese; it was very good but that’s probably because I love American mac and cheese so even if this was mass produced I would have liked it! It wasn’t cheap though and we spent another 30 dollars on lunch on top of the 38 dollars each for our entry. Still, for the best part of a day sightseeing it wasn’t bad.
 

Coca-Cola World

 

 

Right next door to the aquarium and a chance to see the vault where the secret recipe is kept (though my fiancé was highly doubtful it was really in there, as he said surely someone would have done an Oceans 11 style heist by now!). It’s interesting to see the collections of memorabilia and advertising and a bottling plant in action, and you can try Coke products from around the world.

 

Cuts Steakhouse, Atlanta

 

My mother-in-law-to-be had been shopping instead of visiting the aquarium and Coca-Cola World with us, and we were due to meet her in the town centre to have dinner and do some people-watching as DragonCon takes over pretty much the whole city. We saw some amazing costumes just walking down the street.

 

It had started to rain heavily so she ducked into the nearest restaurant, which turned out to be a steakhouse called Cuts – where my fiancé had one of the best steaks he’d ever eaten.

fried green tomatoes

 

It was a fairly posh restaurant – stiff linen napkins, low lighting, that kind of thing – so it was pretty funny when we looked up and saw a man in a full-body parrot costume casually walk past to his table. In fact I don’t think I’ve seen my husband-to-be laugh so hard! The incongruity and completely blasé attitude of the staff, who must be used to this sort of thing, was amazing.

 

He (my fiancé, not the parrot) ordered a steak and said it was one of the best he’d ever had – on a par with Hawksmoor in London which is probably his favourite restaurant. The fillet steak was $39 for 8 oz – quite expensive and among the most expensive we saw on our trip around the US but Hawksmoor charges about that in sterling, meaning for us this didn’t seem too pricey.

 

I wasn’t as hungry so I had the Pecan Salmon – charred salmon served with garlic mashed potatoes topped with a roasted pecan butter sauce for $23. It was very good but after trying a little of my fiancé’s steak I did wish I’d ordered that!

salmon

 

His mum who is vegetarian was trying to decide between a salad and the fried green tomatoes, with a side of fries, but the waiter misunderstood and brought her both, so there was too much for us all to eat but she said it was very good, the tomatoes in particular.

 

In fact the food was so good that we wanted to try the desserts. They were all priced $7, which again is less than in the UK – in an equivalent restaurant you would pay £7 (so more like $10 or $11 – though I realise that the food is cheaper in the US but the tips we left were larger than if we were at home. As an aside, a waiter in a different restaurant told us he was only paid $2 an hour and expected to make the rest in tips – wow!).

 

 

My other half had the warm chocolate walnut fudge brownie which he said was very good; I wanted to try Georgia peaches while we were in the state but was told they were out of season; instead I had cheesecake with peach coulis which was amazing. We were very pleased considering we had gone into the restaurant by chance so I highly recommend it if you are in Atlanta.

 

 

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F1 Foods - Mexico Round-Up and the next challenge: Brazil

I've made a few Mexican dishes lately which are appropriate as the most recent Formula 1 Grand Prix took place in Mexico.

I made these Green Chilli Chicken Chilaquiles, but definitely was too cautious with the chilli!

and I went to a blogger event hosted by Old El Paso where I tried out some recipes and their new Stand 'n' Stuff kits -check them out here.

Chilli does of course go very well with chocolate and Suelle from Mainly Baking made these spiced brownies. She said the spices had a warm and earthy flavour which sounds really good.

This weekend the Formula 1 Grand Prix comes from Brazil - I don't have any cachaca but I do have a Brazilian recipe up my sleeve! Please share yours - sweet or savoury - in the linkup below. You have until Sunday 22nd November so that should be plenty of time! ');

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Meal Planning Monday Week 46

Monday: I'm out so the other half can have a ready meal in the freezer

Tuesday: Spaghetti Bolognese

Wednesday: I'm starting another cake decorating course - a short run of just 5 weeks this time as it was meant to be 8 weeks then I was told the teacher could no longer make the first three classes! And I signed up so long ago I can't even remember what type of course it was.... as I'm out, I expect my fiancé will go to his mum's

Thursday: tacos

Friday: chicken kiev and chips

Saturday
Lunch: hot dogs
Dinner: steak and chips

Sunday
Lunch: Mini Slimming World quiche with leftover potatoes for me, bacon and cheese omelette for him
Dinner: homemade curry - chicken with diced breast for him and prawns for me

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Home Bake Box: Lavender Macarons

Getting things in the post is such fun – I still hand-write letters, shop online both for ‘proper stuff’ (clothes, household goods) and also craft supplies from Ebay, which is usually such a spur of the moment 99p (or less) purchase that by the time a little packet of die cuts or beads arrives, I’d forgetten I bought it!

 

I’ve written before about Degustabox and how much I like the idea of a parcel of goodies turning up once a month, so I was excited when I came across a new company called Home Bake Box.

 

They deliver a box every month containing all the ingredients you need – already weighed out and sealed in separate packets – to make a particular recipe. There’s also a recipe card, a longer leaflet and a whole load of online content you can go onto their website to access (eg different flavour combinations).

 

Home Bake Box is a small family run business so the kind of thing I like to support – they haven’t paid, or asked, or even know, that I’m writing this blog post. I subscribed for a couple of months though ended my subscription as I just wasn’t finding the time to bake along with all the other things I had planned.

 

Communication was great – when I tweeted a question about whether something was gluten free, I had a reply from Abhi straight away. As as aside, the macaron mix was gluten free but she said they couldn’t guarantee it was fine for coeliacs essentially due to other variables, so I thought it best not to chance it. But according to their website, gluten free and vegan mixes are coming soon!

 

Abhi admits on her website she thinks there is room for improvement with the look of the packaging and that the first time they tried to send out jam (as a filling for one of the cake recipes) the sachets leaked, though mine didn’t- I think I received one of the double-bagged ones! I actually like the plain and simple packaging though, and how neat all the little packets look inside the box. It makes the whole thing seem quite accessible and achievable which is good for more inexperienced bakers.

 

I also love the fact that the boxes are small and flat enough to go through the letterbox. While I love getting parcels, it’s a pain when it means knocking on elderly neighbours’ doors when I get home in the evenings as the courier has left my parcels with them! These however came straight through my letterbox.

 

So what were the two boxes I’ve received so far? Well, my heart sank – but in a good way – a little when I opened the first one. Macarons! I find macarons really hard and have even been on a one-day course to improve my technique. In a way I was pleased I would get to try again but at the same time a bit disappointed the recipe wasn’t something different that I hadn’t come across before. On the other hand I think for the majority of bakers, that would be true.

 

Similarly, the following month, which I haven’t baked yet, was Sachertorte. I was a bit disappointed again as I made a Sachertorte once before and it turned out fine – it wasn’t a particularly difficult or unusual bake. I guess it’s because I’m a fairly experienced baker but one thing that I would like to see Home Bake Box doing as the company expands is perhaps offer a beginner’s box, with something simple or something that most bakers won’t have tried before, and an advanced box, with something that is either more technically challenging or uses unusual ingredients that are hard to find in the shops.

 

Having said that, I’ve just seen on their website what was in their October box: ingredients for a pan de muerto, in honour of Mexico’s day of the dead – which is something I’ve never even heard of. I should have stuck with my subscription perhaps!

 

The box that I subscribed to cost £8.99 a month which is actually quite a lot for some of the recipes – though with the Sachertorte kit it even included gold leaf, which is expensive.

 

However, they also offer a Classic Bake Box, which looks much better and is £19.99 a month. If I had realised this when I first subscribed I probably would have bought one of these. In October for instance, as well as the pan de muerto mix, you got a 9-piece skull cookie cutter set and ingredients and icing for decorated sugar cookies, and the kit for a lime, marigold and orange genoise cake. I like the idea of being given a piece of baking equipment as well as the ingredients for the recipes.

 

So how did the macaron recipe turn out? Not quite as well as I had hoped, but macarons are notoriously difficult to make.



I followed the instructions, mixing the ingredients and piping the mixture out onto a silicon macaron mat I already owned.

I waited until they were cool to peel off the baking sheet but unfortunately a lot of them stuck. Perhaps they were too big and therefore not quite cooked through, I'm not sure.

I then made the filling, which was called buttercream but actually involved mixing the powder sachet with egg and milk to make a sort of custard, which was then allowed to cool. I filled the macarons with this and they did taste good, even if they didn't look all that great!

The pack came with a tiny little box to package a few of the macarons up in, which I did to give to my mum as a gift.

I'm sharing these macarons with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is M.

 

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Restaurant Review: Cannizaro House, Wimbledon

This was both the most memorable meal of my life, and the most forgettable, because I can barely recall what I ate (though luckily for this blog I took photos). For one simple reason: the man I adore had just proposed not half an hour earlier.

 

We had been talking about getting married for literally years, and by the time it happened I was getting pretty impatient; there had been some signs over the past few months and weeks that he was leading up to it, but as we were about to go on holiday (with his mum, so I knew or rather hoped he wouldn’t propose then) I’d pretty much given up on the idea of it happening.

 

He suggested we go out to lunch on Sunday, then in the morning told me it was actually dinner, which made me start to wonder… all I knew was that we were heading to Wimbledon and as we pulled up outside the impressive sight of Cannizaro House, I was pretty sure this was going to be it. Even then, as we took a walk around the beautiful gardens before dinner and he distracted me by pointing something out, I was still too shocked to speak when I turned back around to find him on one knee holding out a ring. Of course I said yes!

 

As we  walked back into the hotel, we were greeted with celebratory drinks (my now-fiance had told the staff what he was planning in case the weather was bad and they were going to find us a private area indoors) and went to our table for dinner, in the quietest corner of their conservatory area. I highly recommend this as a location to pop the question!
 

 

So as for the meal itself, I remember ordering lamb… it came with some sort of sauce and fries and was delicious. My new fiancé had steak and béarnaise sauce.

For dessert we had beignets, which are like mini doughnuts, that came with a chocolate dipping sauce. My fiancé was a bit disappointed they weren't the same as the beignets he'd had in New Orleans - but having subsequently been there on the aforementioned holiday and tried them, I definitely prefer these!

But honestly, I really wasn't thinking about the food....

 

 

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