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Bit late isn’t it?

Households across the nation wielded wooden spoons as they prepared to stir up their Christmas puddings on Sunday.

Or are they making next year’s?

Then again, maybe it’s me – is it the cake you’re supposed to really mature?

23 thoughts on “Bit late isn’t it?”

  1. I usually do mine in mid-October, then every second week dose it with brandy.

    Of course, since working from home I haven’t bothered making one this year…

  2. My grandmother died (a couple of decades back) in September, and when tidying up we found the Christmas cake mix being prepared.

  3. The mincemeat has been happily imbibing it’s Pedro Ximinez Sherry and brandy for over a month now and is smelling extremely good.

  4. Arthur Dent said:
    “Never heard of the ancient British tradition of “stir up Sunday””

    Dodgy new-fangled Anglican thing (based on the day’s preface in the Book of Common Prayer – “stir, up, O Lord, the hearts of thy faithful people” or something like that).

    But yes, next year’s, not this. For non-Anglicans it’s better to do it this year but earlier; September seems about right.

  5. It is probably just me but the phrase ‘weilding wooden spoons’ has an alternative meaning. With three boisterous boys to raise my dear old mum often used her wooden spoon for spanking.

  6. Next it’ll be the ancient British custom of the call to prayer ringing out across the leafy suburbs of Peterborough.

  7. I just eat the stuff. Suspect Mrs G. mixes and cooks puddings well in advance. The Christmas cake was made several weeks ahead (began eating ours couple of weeks ago), after a month in the pantry. Also polished off my first batch of mince pies. Lost 10lbs during Stoptober to facilitate festive gluttony.

  8. My gran used to start making hers around August.

    Always hid a sixpence (later 20p), in what I assume was a Darwinian fitness test for her grandchildren. Damn thing nearly pruned me from the family tree a few times as I woozled in the miasmic alcoholic fumes of the thing.

    She was Jewish, but always hedged her bets with Jesus just to be sure. Once asked me, in all serious, when we were watching Clash of the Titans, whatever happened to the gods of Mount Olympus. The sort of heterodoxy only geniuses and lunatics will understand.

    That’s why I don’t give a fuck about lockdowns, Christmas will be spent with my mad relatives even though I don’t know half of them half as well as I should like, and like less than half of them half as well as they deserve.

  9. @ Arthur Dent
    “Stir up Sunday” is the day to make the Christmas Cake, not the puddings.
    I made mine a couple of weeks ago – not as early as some but then the one our family eats on Christmas Day is one made the previous year.

  10. Once asked me, in all serious, when we were watching Clash of the Titans, whatever happened to the gods of Mount Olympus.

    Douglas Adams considered that one, via Dirk Gently.

    Assuming you don’t mean the 2010 version, you’ve definitely had a late (second?) brood. But a flailing neuron is telling me we’ve been here before.

  11. The thing about the puddings- why do they take 5 hours to cook by steaming and 6 mins by microwave. the only answer i’ve ever been able to elicit is Suet. which for explanatory power is still rather crap.

  12. “Always hid a sixpence (later 20p)”: for us it was a silver thruppence. Whether there was a stock of them to allow for the occasional one being eaten I don’t know.

  13. Whether there was a stock of them to allow for the occasional one being eaten I don’t know.

    In these days of Track ‘n’ Trace, that problem lends itself to an easy solution.

  14. @ Hallowed Be
    My great-grandmother’s pudding recipe has “boil for six hours, leave for six weeks, then boil for two hours before eating” so if you use the microwave on Christmas Day it won’t actually be raw, just under-cooked. if you substitute the microwave for a few minutes for the six-hour boil then the flavours will be all lumpy.

  15. @ dearieme
    My parents had a stock of silver thruppences with a couple of silver fourpences and a couple of silver sixpences to make up the number.
    They had to be silver as silver plus alcohol (from the brandy or sherry or barley wine, according to choice of recipe is an antiseptic) – the 20p piece, nor any other post-1948 coin would not qualify.

  16. PJF – I’m older than I’d prefer to be but my wife reassures me that my immaturity keeps me young.

    Dearieme – that’s what it was. Thruppence, not sixpence. She kept a stock of them for years before swapping out for the successor pointy coin, I might’ve choked on the same coin more than once like some sort of Yuletide themed Groundhog Day – we were never allowed to keep them after the Heimlich maneuver. Pretty thrifty.

  17. Agree. Mix needs to mature for 1-2 days before cooking, then for a few months before serving

    Applies to Christmas cake & pudding, mincemeat, Parkin and more. Even Mr Kipling does the pre-cook 48hr mature for mincemeat pies

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