- We still hang the pudding high for 2 weeks. When my Grandmother did this it was to keep it away from the farm animals.
PLUM PUDDING: My grandmother was a wonderful cook, unfortunately her mother died when she was 14, so at that age she was taken out of school and had to learn how to cook and take care of all of her four brothers, one sister and her father. She always had something coming out of the oven, something going into the oven, and something she was preparing that would go into the oven a bit later. My mother reports that her kitchen always smelled beautiful, especially in winter when all the doors were closed.
This is her classic plum pudding. It won first prize at the Leeton show in 1935. (Leeton is a small town in the Riverina area of New South Wales. It's known for it's canned fruit) My mother grew up there on a sheep and wheat farm, her uncles all had fruit orchards. We make her pudding as she made it, we boil her pudding for 3 hours then hang it high up on the end of a broom stick for 2 weeks. The height was important because that is what kept it away from the animals.
- The pudding needs to be tied really tightly or else when you boil it, water will get in, and it will spoil.
- Stuffed with original sixpences and threepence coins, that my mother kept from 1935 from her mother.
- We serve the pudding with home made thick caramel sauce and rich vanilla ice-cream
