Christmas Pudding Fruit Replacement

Our answer

Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding (from NIGELLA CHRISTMAS) contains a mixture of currants, sultanas and chopped prunes. The fruits are soaked in sherry before using, so that they become plumped up and soft and give the pudding its rich flavour.

Glazed, glace or candied cherries are cherries that have been preserved by cooking in a thick sugar syrup. They will not soak up any extra liquid and are not a suitable substitute for some of the prunes in this recipe. However, if you like glace cherries then you could add some to the pudding batter as an extra ingredient. We would suggest using 150g glace cherries (about 3/4 cup) and if they have some syrup clinging to them then dry them briefly with some kitchen paper (paper towels). Glace cherries can sink during baking (in the pudding they would end up towards the top of the pudding once it is turned out) so we suggest halving or quartering the cherries and tossing them in a bowl with 1 to 2 tablespoons of flour from the recipe, to help them to stay more evenly distributed. Stir the cherries (and any flour left in the bowl) into the pudding batter at the same time as the soaked fruit, in step 5 of the recipe.