Steamed Cranberry Plum Pudding

If you recall this post, you might be wondering why it's been so long since I tested a steamed pudding. In that post, I spoke of the fourteen puddings in Grandma's box and of how it would take me a year to test them all. Well, come summertime, who wanted to steam a pudding? Not me. It took cooler weather and even a few snowflakes in the air to get me into a pudding-testing mood.  It also took the arrival of cranberries in the grocery store because I'd been looking forward to testing this one next.  

How to make Steamed Cranberry Plum Pudding

But wait, you say, that's not the title on the recipe card, and you're right. I'm leaning into the rebranding of prunes as dried plums because that's what they are. Also, plum pudding from the time of Dickens would have contained dried plums, not fresh ones. So, from here on out, the terms will be used interchangeably. Now, to the test. 

The first step was to chop stuff, and this gadget made short work of the nuts and cranberries. (Not an affiliate link).   

The sticky dried plums required chopping by hand. 

I put the chopped fruits and nuts into a bowl and added the bread crumbs. 

The next step was to combine the rest of the ingredients.   

I used a hand mixer to mix them, and the delicious aroma of gingerbread filled the kitchen.   

I folded the fruit, nut, and crumbs into the mixture, and the pudding batter was done.  Simple!

Instead of using the trusty mold I used in my first three tests, I decided to spoon the batter into a greased bowl, thinking this would give me something closer to the speckled cannonball spoken of in A Christmas Carol. Which bowl to use? 

I settled on the yellow one, which was 1.5 quarts. It seemed to be about the right size for the amount of batter, and, sure enough, it fit.  

Following the instructions on the recipe card, I covered the bowl with foil and sealed it well. The recipe didn't say to poke holes in the foil, but I'd seen enough of Grandma's recipes for steamed puddings to know that I should do it.  

Next, I made a sling out of foil to help me lower the pudding-filled bowl into the simmering water. 

I then put the lid on the pot and set the timer for two hours, as the recipe instructed. 

When the timer rang, the pudding came out looking something like a brain.  

Brain, cannonball, or whatever else you want to call it, it was closer to the shape I envisioned when I read A Christmas Carol. All it needed was a sprig of holly. I whipped some cream--the recipe said to use hard sauce, but that would have to be for another day--and cut the first slice. 

It was raw! Can you see how gooey the middle is? We ate some of the outside edges to get a taste, but overall, it was a disaster. 

I had to try again, and so, I did. The next day.  

As I reread the recipe, I noticed a couple of odd things. For one, there was no leavening listed among the ingredients. I checked some of Grandma's other pudding recipes and found that they contained baking soda, so I decided to add some to my next attempt. I also saw that the "6 hours" steaming time had been crossed out on the back of the card and "2 hours" had been added. 

Aha. It dawned on me that Grandma had steamed the pudding in her usual way, which was to spoon the batter into two or three greased mason jars.  With a smaller amount of pudding in each, the jars would have taken only two hours to steam, not the six that a round mold required. 

Now, I understood what had gone wrong, but I wasn't ready to give up on my round mold yet. I mixed the second batch of batter in the same manner as before except for the addition of one teaspoon of baking soda. I then lowered the bowl onto a rack in a pressure cooker with several inches of water in the bottom. I had done this once before, and it had shortened the steaming time by a third. 

Four hours later, the pudding had reached 98 degrees Celsius, the temperature Google said was appropriate for a completely cooked pudding. The middle still gave off some moist crumbs, but I let the pudding cool for a few minutes and then turned it out.  

The top of it stuck to the mold, so I patched it up as best I could. It seemed to have risen more than my first attempt and looked less like a slimy brain. I cut a slice.  

It seemed to be cooked through.  

Next came a huge dollop of real whipped cream, a must-have topping for a pudding, in my opinion. 

The Verdict

Imagine if you will a combination of spicy gingerbread and tangy cranberries. Now, add crunchy nuts and dapples of gooey plums. If that interesting mix of flavors sounds good to you, then you would like this pudding.  Did we like it? Very much. Adding the baking soda was the right call. The second attempt was lighter and more cake-like than the taste I had of the first. However, it seemed like the outside edges were somewhat overcooked compared to the middle. Next time, I won't use a bowl for a mold. 

If you'd like to try this pudding, I'd suggest using a mold like this one, which has no middle. Or, follow the instructions in the recipe below for using Grandma's standard Mason jar method. You have to scoop the pudding out of the jar to serve it, which isn't quite as pretty as a slice from a molded pudding, but it tastes just as great. Click on the top right corner of the recipe to download or print it out.