The weight of love...

I must be ill.  Yesterday, I didn't make Saturday Breakfast with my family.  This is probably only the third time in around thirty two years, so I hope that Miss R and the rest of the ne'er-do-wells forgive me.  I chose instead to make my Christmas cakes and puddings (note the plural in both cases).  

I may have mentioned this before, but in my life before Binland, I made cakes for a living.  Each year, this reached a crescendo with two hundred puddings and fifty cakes to flog at Christmas Fairs and the like.  Since I have stopped catering for the masses, I have found it almost impossible to make just one of each, so usually end up with six puddings and three cakes.  I start trying to find homes for them before I start, so that at least I know that some of them will have homes to go to before Christmas.

I'd done quite well this year, I had three cakes accounted for, so no surplus there, but the puddings?  Well, this was a different story.  The thing is, I use my Nanny Joyce's recipe for the puds.  She inherited it from her grandma, and I'm now the proud owner of the original recipe, typed upon a piece of yellowed, torn paper, which I have framed to protect from further abuse.

Various female ancestors over the course of time have changed the weights, and it's all a bit hit and miss as to what the right quantities are.  Mind you, with the amount of alcohol splashes over it, I'm surprised that any puddings were made at all, but this might also explain the amendments.

So this year, I decided to stick to the weights in the red biro (this may be quill and ink, who knows).  The recipe very clearly states that this will make two 2 pint puddings.  I wanted three, so I simply added 50% to each ingredient and waited for the magic to unfold.

It was as I mixing the flour and suet with the fruit in my washing up bowl that I sensed there might be a basin issue....ie, not enough of them.  I had bought six, so I filled them, then spent the rest of the morning hunting around for similar containers which could be used.

I am now the proud owner of eleven Christmas puddings.  

Not to worry though.  I have homes for three, so the rest can go in a cupboard till next year...and the year after...and the year after that.

Unless the husband finds them, in which case, the recipe will be brought out again next year...