Recipe of the month: DECEMBER
Low Histamine Christmas Pudding – without dried fruit.
It’s impossible to make a traditional Christmas pudding when you’re avoiding dried fruits. You can, nonetheless, ‘have your cake and eat it’.
You need not be deprived of pudding just because you are on a Strictly Low Histamine diet. Make this delicious steamed golden syrup pudding, specially modified for people with HIT. The original version was a great favourite with my own mother and grandmother.
Ingredients
4 oz. (110g or 1/2 cup) sugar
2 free-range, pastured eggs
4 oz. (110g or 1/2 cup) butter or palm-oil-free vegetable shortening, melted
4 oz. (110g or 1 cup) all-purpose plain gluten-free flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1.5 oz. (40ml) oat milk, brown rice milk or dairy milk
½ teaspoon natural, alcohol-free, oil-based vanilla extract
5 oz. (140g) golden syrup
rice bran oil spray or other vegetable oil spray
Equipment
Electric mixer with bowl
Another bowl
A sieve
A spatula
A steamed-pudding tin/mold, with a lid that can be fastened on securely
A large cooking pot with a lid
A wire rack that fits in the bottom of the cooking pot
Instructions
- Sift together into a bowl the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
- Crack the eggs into the bowl of an electric mixer, add the sugar and beat until the mixture is light and creamy.
- Pour in the milk and butter and continue beating until they are well blended.
- Remove the bowl from the mixer. Using a spatula, fold in the vanilla essence and the sifted dry ingredients from the other bowl, to make a batter.
- Spray the inside of the pudding tin with oil and pour in the golden syrup.
- Pour the pudding batter into the tin and fasten the lid.
- Put the wire rack inside the large cooking pot. Cover it with water, place it on the stove-top and bring the water to the boil.
- Lower the steamed pudding tin into the pot, so that it sits on the wire rack.
- Put the lid on the pot, reduce the heat to a simmer and boil the pudding for an hour and a half.
- While it is cooking, lift the lid of the pot occasionally to check the water level. If water has boiled away, add more boiling water to keep the level up.
- After the cooking time has elapsed, lift out the pudding tin. Immediately invert it on a serving dish and lift away the tin from the pudding.
- Serve drizzled with maple syrup, low-histamine custard, more golden syrup or coconut cream.
Decorate with a sprig of plastic holly for a festive look.
The pudding can be re-heated later if it is not to be eaten straight away, but do remove it from the tin while it is hot.
