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Why You’ll Love My Recipe
Not quite fruitcake and not quite carrot cake, this traditional Christmas pudding is best when made well in advance. Make some now and freeze it for the holidays!
This family favorite of ours is a carrot Christmas pudding, served with a delicious brown sugar sauce. Why not follow it up with a shimmery Santa baby cocktail or two? And don’t forget the vanilla ice cream!
Karlynn’s Recipe Notes
- Skill Level: Though this recipe requires time, it’s quite easy.
- Total Time: Mixing the ingredients for the cake will only take you 15 minutes. Steaming it, however, will take approximately 5 hours. Ideally, you’ll make this days, or even weeks in advance.
- Variations: This recipe is such a classic, you probably shouldn’t change it much. But, you could play a little with different types of candied fruit or whichever raisins you’re readily able to find. Try adding some cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, or cloves, to add more depth to the all-spice. Mix in a handful of chopped walnuts.
- Tools Needed: For this recipe, you’ll need a large bowl and a hand mixer or stand mixer, a grater, a small glass bowl that can be steamed, a trivet, and a large pot with a lid.
What You’ll Need For Ingredients
Fruit: This pudding is packed with pineapple, cherries, and two types of raisins. You can stick with those classic ingredients or try some other candied or dried fruits. Dates, shredded coconut, dried cranberries, or even some dried kiwi could be fun additions.
Cake: The Christmas pudding batter starts with a simple base of butter, sugar, flour, and all-spice. It gets a lot of its structure, and nutrition, from grated carrots and potatoes. They make the cake dense, sturdy, and filling. When all of the ingredients are given the chance to meld together fully, ideally over the course of weeks, the flavours are rich and complex.
How To Make Christmas Pudding
This is a brief overview of the recipe. The full list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add all of the carrots and half of the potatoes. Mix in the flour, salt, and spices. Add fruits.
- Dissolve baking soda in the rest of the potatoes and then add that to the mixture. Mix well.
- Put batter in a small glass bowl, cover and steam for 4-5 hours.
- Cool for at least 24 hours.
Karlynn’s Tips and Tricks for Making Christmas Pudding
Make it in Advance: If you’d like this Christmas pudding to be at it’s best for the holiday season, make it at the end of November and give it time. If that’s not possible, try to make it at least 24 hours in advance so that it can sit and rest. It will be more stable that way, and the flavours will blend together better. Wrap it up tightly and store it in the fridge or freezer. Reheat it on Christmas morning and serve it with some brown sugar syrup and a scoop of ice cream or some whipped cream.
Be Extra Traditional: Back when people started making this cake, it was traditional to bake a small trinket like a silver coin into the middle of the cake. Whoever found it was supposed to be lucky. Try this if you’d like, just don’t chip any teeth.
Storage Instructions
Freeze the Christmas pudding in the bowl you steamed it in, as long as it’s oven and freezer safe. That way you can pop it right into the oven to reheat it when you’re ready to eat. Cover it tightly in foil to keep out moisture and freeze it for a few weeks.
More Delicious Christmas Recipes
Looking for more easy recipes to make this holiday season?
Try making some Old Fashioned Gingerbread or Classic Scottish Shortbread for your cookie trays.
Have some Christmas Biscotti with a mug of steaming Irish Coffee.
There you go, friends. A little twist on classic Christmas pudding, just in time for the holidays. Make it soon and let me know how you like it.
Happy Baking!
Karlynn
Grandma Marion’s Traditional Christmas Pudding
Ingredients
- 1 cup coarsely grated carrots
- 1 cup grated raw potato
- ½ cup butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup flour
- 2 teaspoons all-spice
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup seedless Thompson raisins
- 1 cup sultana raisins
- ¼ cup 2 rounds candied pineapple, about 1/4 cup dried candied pineapple chunks
- 1 cup candied cherries
- small glass bowl to put the pudding to steam and a trivet and a lidded pot to accomplish said steaming
Instructions
- Cream the butter and sugar together.
- Add in the carrots and half of the potatoes.
- Mix in the flour, salt and spices.
- Add in your fruit and raisins.
- Dissolve the baking soda into the last half of the potatoes, and then add to the mixture last.
- Cover, and steam in a small glass bowl for 4-5 hours. I use my smallest in my set of nesting Pyrex bowls, it is exactly the right size. I then place it in a large pot on a trivet to keep the bottom of the bowl off of the water, add an inch of water or so, put the lid on and steam away. You do have to refill the water since it takes a few hours.
- Freeze and serve for Christmas dinner, vanilla ice cream and a brown sugar sauce are amazing on it!
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Kelly says
remember eating this when I was young I have a question can this recipe be water bathed? if so how long?
Sheila Casper says
Suldana raisins,we call them golden I was a little stuck on that one 😊
Peggy Ziegler says
I think if you want your pudding to age it should be left in the fridge not freezer prior to use. Just like Christmas Cake??
jeanie says
Geraldine Graham You put your pudding in a pot of water to “steam” which I amcertain means just biling on med-low & that is why you must check & add water to make sure it doessn’t eun dry before the pudding is cooked.
Rose says
I once read that in Ancient Times any dried fruit was referred to as Plum, therefore the raisins made this a Plum Pudding.
Geraldine Graham says
I would like to make this recipe of Christmas pudding. But it does not give the oven temp to cook it at. It does give the oven temp to reheat it at which is 300° F until It’s thawed and hot.
Carolyn says
Do you have recipe for Brown Sugar Sauce?
Judy Vander Ploeg says
I just had to tell you that I loved the pictures of you & your family “making memories”. Times like this are what Christmas is all about.
I haven’t had Christmas pudding in many years, but have fond memories of my dad’s side of the family all getting together for Christmas and finishing off the meal with the Christmas pudding.
Thanks for sharing this wonderful day with us!
Karlynn says
Thanks Judy, I was sad to have missed doing it this year as well, better planning next year! I wanted to do cookies and have the photos done, it’s fun and our families loved getting the pictures.
Carol says
Could you please clarify in weight for overseas readers what is “2 rounds of candied pineapple”. Thanks
Donna says
Hi Carol. Candied pineapple can be bought in chunks or in round slices. I think “2 rounds” means enough chunks that would make up 2 round slices. I’m making the recipe today and that is how I’m interpreting the measure.