Can I Make The Ultimate Christmas Pudding In Individual Portions?

Our answer

Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding (from NIGELLA CHRISTMAS is a fruit-packed steamed Christmas pudding that has notes of caramel and treacle from the Pedro Ximenez sherry. Nigella's recipe has instructions for cooking 1.7 litre/3-pint, 1.2 litre/2-pint and 600ml/1-pint puddings.

Individual pudding basins or moulds are usually 150-200mls, so the full recipe would make around 8-11 individual puddings. We would estimate that the puddings should be steamed for 1 hour first time around and also 1 hour second time around. If you wanted to gift puddings that could be reheated in a microwave then you would need to steam the puddings first time around for a full 2 hours. To reheat, you would probably need to microwave the pudding for 30-45 seconds on full power and then stand for 1 minute. Check that the pudding is hot all the way through before serving. We would also mention that it would be preferable to use plastic pudding basins. Aluminium pudding moulds are not particularly good for storing Christmas puddings as aluminium can react with dried fruits. In addition, you can't reheat puddings in the microwave if they are in aluminium moulds.