your Christmas Pudding is?

Since this is the last day of Stir-up week, we'll be making our pudding tonight. I try to make it on Stir-up Sunday proper, but with the Nutcracker rehearsal schedule I'm exhausted so much of the time that I've given myself (and the family) permission to fall into bed with traditions un-honoured, and keep some looser timelines.

My Christmas pudding recipe started with my Great Grandma's recipe, and then I added and subtracted and eventually came up with a recipe I loved, which I included in a small hand-written booklet of Christmas recipes and reminiscences that I photocopied for a few friends back in 1984. This year, to my dismay, my copy of "Christmas Dinner 1984" has vanished, along with my only copy of my adapted recipe! It is, somewhere, in the parentsplace archives, but diligent searching hasn't allowed me to find it, alas!

So unless someone copied it down and can post it back to me, I have to start again with what I can remember (which is fortunately pretty good). Here's what I'm going to try:

400 ml bread crumbs	(the 1984 recipe called for 750ml, but it was too large, so I'm scaling down)	cream together
100 g brown sugar
200 g soft butter
3 egg yolks	(I'm think the 1984 had only three eggs for the full-size, but eggs make the pudding lighter and I like the eggy flavour)	Beat thouroughly until pale yellow and fluffy, and beat in
200 ml milk		Beat in
1 ml cloves		Stir in
5 ml cinnamon
3 ml nutmeg
5 ml salt
300 g finely chopped dried figs and prunes		Stir in
100 g finely chopped citron
250 g candied cherries
3 egg whites		Beat to stiff peaks and fold in gently

Thouroughly grease a pudding-mold. Arrange decorative patterns in the mold from candied angelica, candied citrus peels, and other fruits. Pack the pudding in on top of the decorations, being careful not to dislodge them. (It is also theoretically possible to candy rutabaga slices, which will allow us to cut holly-leave shapes out of the slices. I'll let you know how that goes if I get enough energy to try) Cover and steam