Cranberry Clementine Steamed Pudding is a much lighter, less expensive and quicker version of a traditional Christmas pudding. I discovered steamed puddings after watching Alastair Sim in A Christmas Carol. I love the scene when Mrs. Cratchit serves the Christmas pudding to her adoring family. In such a humble home, the pudding was majestic. That scene is quintessentially Christmas to me.
Traditional Christmas pudding recipes are a combination of dried fruits and nuts, normal cake ingredients and suet. I made Martha Stewart’s recipe for years and loved it until we could no longer handle the suet.
Suet is ground, raw, hard animal fat used in all manner of old fashion cooking particularly British baking. After my family started complaining of stomach issues following Christmas dinner, I narrowed the issue down to the suet in the plum pudding. Since then I’ve been on the hunt for a new steamed pudding recipe to add to my Christmas repertoire.
Steamed puddings are essentially cakes that are steamed instead of baked. The texture is a very moist cake not at all like pudding. My Cranberry Clementine Steamed Pudding is moist, full of cranberries and simple to make.
I used my plum pudding mold but you could successfully use a springform pan. Like all recipes, there’s a few insider tips that will elevate your game if you’re new to steamed puddings.
Make sure all of your wet ingredients are at room temperature to ensure maximum batter volume. Secondly, use the spoon and level technique when measuring your flour rather than scooping.
Jamming a measuring cup into your flour container and then leveling it off will give you more flour than the recipe requires and can leave the finished product dry and dense.
It’s always best to use freshly squeezed fruit juice in your baking. Many commercial citrus juices contain added sweeteners which will throw the flavour.
You’ll be forced to squeeze your own juice given that clementine juice is almost impossible to find. The end result is so worth it!
Dusting your fruit with a little flour will keep it floating dry in the batter rather than bleeding and sinking to the bottom of the pudding.
Last thing, if you’re using frozen cranberries bake your pudding a little longer as the batter will be very cold.
Have a long wooden skewer or a piece of dry linguine on hand to test whether your Cranberry Clementine Steamed Pudding is done. You need something that will get to the bottom of your deep pudding.
Inviting friends to our home and cooking for them is my love language. Over the weekend, I served my Cranberry and Clementine Steamed Pudding with warm butterscotch sauce to rave reviews. The tart cranberry and butterscotch combination was a lip smacking kick off to our holiday season.
If you make my recipe, leave me a note in the comment section. I’d love to hear how it turns out.
Thanks for reading. xo
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup freshly squeezed clementine juice - about 8 large clementines
1 teaspoon pure orange extract
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 extra large eggs
3 cups fresh or frozen cranberries - don't let the cranberries thaw before folding into the batter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350*F
- Spray your pudding mold with spray release.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together in a medium size bowl.
- Place butter and sugar in your stand mixer and beat until light and fluffy with the paddle attachment.
- Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well.
- Turn motor off, lower the bowl and scrape all of the batter down into the bowl.
- Lift bowl up, turn motor to low and slowly drizzle clementine juice into the egg mixture. The batter will separate.
- Slowly add the flour mixture a half cup at a time, lowering and scraping the bowl when necessary.
- When the batter is completely homogenized, remove the bowl from the mixer
- Dust the cranberries with 2 tablespoons of flour making sure they are all coated.
- Fold floured cranberries into the pudding batter gently.
- Spoon batter into your pudding mold then place on cover.
- Put the pudding mold in a larger baking pan and place in the bottom of your oven
- Pour boiling water to the just before the top of the large pan creating a bain-marie
- Bake for 90 minutes or until your skewer comes out clean. Start checking at 70 minutes in case your oven bakes faster than mine. You can also use a steam pot but the oven method works just as well.
- Leave the bain-marie in the oven while you remove the pudding. Allow the bain-marie to cool for safer removal.
- Let the pudding cool for 15 minutes before decanting onto a serving platter.
Notes
THE LOVE: Removing the pudding from the deep mold can be a little nerve wracking. Loosen the outside and inside edges with a butter knife then invert over your platter with a confident thunk! Puddings are more resilient than they look.
