Enjoy a scrumptious chocolatey twist on the traditional Christmas pudding with our nutty but fruitless recipe, containing instead lashings of delicious chocolate and festive spices. A perfectly indulgent way to finish off your Christmas meal!
Ingredients
Ingredients
• 175g unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
• 50g cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting
• 100g caster sugar
• 50g soft brown sugar
• 3 large free-range eggs, beaten
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 150g plain flour
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 50g finely chopped hazelnuts
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 75ml milk
• 100g Lily O’Brien’s Dark Chocolate Drops for Baking, roughly chopped
For the white chocolate sauce
• 200g fine white cooking chocolate, broken into chunks
• 80ml double cream
Method
• Grease a 1.5 litre pudding basin generously and dust with cocoa powder then set to one side.
• Using an electric stand or hand mixer, beat the butter, caster sugar and brown sugar together until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs a little at a time, beating in-between until fully incorporated.
• Measure out the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a separate bowl and mix everything together with a spoon. Sift over the top of the wet mixture then gently fold in with a large metal spoon. Fold in the spices, hazelnuts, vanilla, milk and chocolate, then pour the batter carefully into the basin.
• Cut a square piece of baking paper and fold a crease down the middle. Lay this over the basin and tie securely around with string. Over the top, cover with an additional later of foil and turn up at the edges all the way around.
• Place the pudding basin into a large pan with a lid. Boil a kettle and pour in the water until it comes to halfway up the side of the basin. Cover the pan with a lid and simmer over a medium heat for 1.5 hours.
• Once the pudding has finished steaming, remove the basin from the pan then carefully remove the foil and baking paper. Run a knife around the rim of the pudding basin to loosen the pudding, then turn upside down onto your serving plate and leave to cool a little while you make the ganache.
• For the white chocolate ganache, place the white chocolate chunks and cream into a heatproof bowl. Place over a pan of simmering water (making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water), and stir until the chocolate has just melted into the cream.
• Leave the ganache to cool for around 10 minutes then using a spoon, carefully drizzle over the pudding, creating large drips down the sides, then serve immediately.
