From: Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking, p. 158
This is a traditional vegetarian Christmas Pudding with lots of dried fruit, nuts and spices. As suggested in the book, I prepared our Pudding in autumn and let it mature until Christmas. Even though it takes very long (6 hours!) to steam, the result was definitely worth it. Sadly, not everybody in my family is fond of Christmas Pudding ‒ therefore I only made two small Puddings and gave one to a friend who loved the surprise just in time for Christmas.
Gluten-Free: I substituted the flour and the breadcrumbs for gluten-free products, which worked well.
Alternatives: The brazil nuts I used seemed not to mature too well in the pudding, giving it a slighly unpleasant note. I think that they must either have been old when I used them (even though they were well before the “best before” date) or that there has been another problem. Next time I would try using more almonds instead of the brazil nuts to give a milder flavour.