Stir up Sunday.....a Christmas tradition.

[matriarch]

Stir-up Sunday

The Sunday before Advent - also known as Stir-Up Sunday - is traditionally the time to get the Christmas pudding made, allowing plenty of time for the flavours to develop before it's enjoyed on Christmas Day.

You may not want to even think about Christmas until the last weeks of December, but this weekend it's worth making an exception. Preparing the pudding now will mean one less thing to worry about nearer the big day and, without the pressure of a million other things to do, can even be relaxing and enjoyable! Just get your largest bowl, put in all the ingredients and let the whole family have a stir until it's all mixed together - and don't forget to make a wish while you're at it.

Most recipes require you to soak the fruit for at least 12 hours before stirring in the dry ingredients and cooking the pudding, so make sure you start the process on Saturday if you want to finish the job over the weekend.

Stirring tradition
Another important addition to the mixture is an old coin, which is cooked in the pudding. It will supposedly bring wealth to whoever finds it on their plate on Christmas Day. An old silver sixpence or threepenny bit is the traditional coin, but a thoroughly washed 10p piece will do. Just make sure everyone knows it's there and warn them to look out for it when tucking into the pud.

Other traditional additions to the pudding include a ring, supposed to foretell a marriage, and a thimble for a lucky life. If you're worried your guests may swallow them by mistake you could wrap all these lucky charms in little packages of greaseproof paper before stirring them in. (It's probably best to leave them out altogether if small children will be eating the pudding, or just sit them on the side of their plates so they're easy to spot.)

Elizabeth David's advice:
"For mixing the pudding you need a really capacious bowl and a stout wooden spoon - and as everybody in the family is supposed to take a hand in the job, this part of it shouldn't be very hard work."

Recipes
There are lots of recipes for Christmas puddings, some for dark rich puddings, others for lighter ones. Some contain fresh fruit such as apples, others have different dried fruits - sultanas, raisins, currants, apricots and candied peel. Some contain beef suet which you can buy ready shredded in boxes instead of getting it whole from the butcher and grating it yourself. You can also find vegetarian suet which gives a lighter result.

Remember that the pudding will swell as it cooks so don't fill the pudding basins too full - leave about three centimetres (one inch) of space to the rim. Once the pudding has been steamed it will keep in a cool, dry place for several weeks or longer and will need to be steamed for a couple of hours before serving on Christmas day.

Whichever recipe you choose, you'll only need a little slice after a big Christmas dinner, but it reheats very well for Boxing Day lunch. Flame it with rum and serve it with brandy butter, rum sauce, cream or homemade custard for a memorable once-a-year feast. Some people like to fry slices of leftover pudding in butter and serve it with cream!

 

[oggbashan]

Family Christmas Pudding Traditions

My mother-in-law used to make her Christmas Puddings long before Stir-Up Sunday, usually a couple of months before. However, she insisted that all members of the family had to stir the Pudding and if not some disaster would befall that member of the family in the following year. When I became engaged to her daughter, it was a sign of my mother-in-law-to-be's approval that I was required to stir the Pudding that autumn.

My brother used to be a research chemist specialising in food, originally with a development team for frozen food, and later a research director for a large UK bakery producer. For some years it was my family's tradition that we would be presented with a range of experimental Christmas Puddings for next Christmas's production with a ten page questionnaire to complete for each Pudding. My brother's experimental Puddings were delivered to the various branches of the family in April and had to be eaten, with the questionnaires on the table, before the end of May. Some of the younger members of the family welcomed the 'real' Christmas Puddings at Christmas only because they didn't have to think about the answers for the questionnaires. They weren't told that the 'real' Christmas Puddings were the successful experiments.

Many years ago my father was given some tinned food (Edited - checked my father's family history) that had been from the same batches as that used for the disastrous Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin with the ships Erebus and Terror. One Christmas we each had a teaspoonful of tinned Christmas Pudding from one of those tins. The taste was slightly metallic but acceptable. Now we know that the sealing process introduced too much lead into the food. We didn't know that while we were eating it.

Og