Features and blogging

Why do I write so much about baking (and sometimes running), when this is essentially a words website? Point of fact, why DO I bake so much (and run, sometimes)?
The answer is that baking and jogging are my meditation moments. I’m not constantly cooking cakes and running long distances – the hobbies don’t help me if they’re tricky bakes or sprained-knee runs, and I definitely don’t do fancy piping, and I can only run 10k once every four years. But I do very much love both things, because when I bake nice easy things, or run nice easy routes, my mind drifts off to peaceful places where thoughts flow free. One cake can be a whole chapter of ideas, and I’ve often got paper and pencil standing by to jot down thoughts.
When it comes to Christmas puds, there is only one small window each year for the making and steaming time required by the little blighters. I need the best part of a whole day to babysit the puds, which must be watched over and topped up as they steam.
Somewhere at the end of half term is good, usually just past Mr Fairy’s birthday, often on a weekend. That’s when you’ll find me gathering all the ingredients on my countertop, prepping the bowls, cutting my baking paper and foil, and wiping down the little coins that get chucked in, wished over, stirred.
I’m using the plural because there are always two puds on the go, and that’s thanks to my grandma’s old recipe, which is so huge that even when I halve the ingredients it fills one big pudding bowl and one small one – so there’s always a spare. I mean, we had massive family Christmases, but I only ever remember there being one pud. Weird…
This year I’ve found the correct silver coins after our house move, hurray! Don’t ask what I used last year, let’s just say the cousins who bagged the smaller pud got a weird surprise in their bowls (sorry bout that, didn’t really work did it?).
Nonna’s recipe has an unholy amount of fruit, nuts, sugar and suet (bye bye arteries) yet comes out tasting light as air – the delicate citrus flavour is down to curls of lemon zest, carrot and apple, and brandy is substituted with a good slosh of stout mixed with a spoon of bicarb, poured in with a big whooshing fizz.
The measurements are odd, taken from Nonna’s old imperial recipe, which I converted to metric myself so the maths looks strange, but trust me it all works. There’s a fiddly bit at the end involving string and a bit of swearing, but these days I can do it without help AND while holding a conversation.
If you want the full recipe – up to now a family secret – comment in the box at the end of this post and I’ll send you the whole nine yards: it’s pretty much a hardback.
For now, here’s my little gallery of this year’s steam day. All that’s left to do is re-wrap the puds and store them on a high shelf until the final Christmas Day steam. And now we can all get on with November.
PS After all that cooking and washing up, don’t expect me to cook dinner, I’m not THAT domesticated. Someone else can do it while I get on with all the work I’ve planned while stirring and steaming.

Bowls with baking paper circles; eggs and marmalade in the middle; fizzy bicarb stout added; get the family to chuck in coins, stir and wish; do the fiddly thing with baking paper, foil and string; pot, water, steam.