Smaller Versions of Ultimate Christmas Pudding

Asked by Kayles. Answered on 16th November 2014

Full question

I've been using the Ultimate Christmas Pudding recipe for the last couple of years and was wondering if I could it into individual Christmas puddings to give as gifts using smaller pudding basins and cooking for a shorter time. Would this work?

I am planning on making Christmas puddings and I am going to use Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding recipe but I am planning on making individual ones to give as gifts. Please can you tell me what the steaming times would be for 1/4 pint and 1/2 pint pudding basins. Many thanks, Lawz.

I would like to make Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding. How do I reduce the ingredients? I would like to make one pudding for 8 and one for 4 people. Thank you for your help Liz

Our answer

Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding recipe (from Christmas and on the Nigella website) is enough to fill a 1.7 litre/3-pint pudding basin, or can be split into smaller sizes. Nigella suggests perhaps making one 1.2 litre/2-pint pudding and one 600m/1-pint pudding - these would serve 8-10 people for the 1.2 litre version and 4 to 6 for the 600ml version. Or you could easily make three 600ml/1-pint puddings to give as gifts. The steaming time for the 1.2 litre and 600ml versions are 3 hours for the initial steaming and then a further 3 hours for the second steaming (on Christmas Day).

For 300ml/1/2-pint size basins we would stick to the timings above, as it is difficult to overcook a Christmas Pudding since steaming is such a gentle method of cooking. The mini pudding basins are usually around 150ml/1/4-pint capacity. Unfortunately we have not tested the recipe for this size of pudding but we would guess at an initial steaming time of 2 hours and then a second steaming time of 1 hour. However we cannot guarantee the results as we have not tested this size ourselves.