Andy Jaeger

As promised to my sister, here are two options if you don’t fancy Christmas pudding. We had both on the big day, and both are still going. Actually, the Christmas pudding icecream is so rich I suspect it will still be in the freezer in March, being consumed one teaspoon at a time.

I’m not an accurate cook (I actually don’t own kitchen scales) so everything is fairly approximate.

Mulled wine jelly
Mulled wine jelly started with good mulled wine. We had friends round the Sunday before Christmas and I think I made something approaching twelve litres of the stuff before we finished. My mulled wine started off with

• A box of red wine (one of the three litre boxes)
• A small bottle of brandy (it all went in – in retrospect that may have been a mistake – wow!)
• An orange studded with cloves
• Two more oranges and two lemons roughly sliced
• Some sugar
• Some allspice
• and some cinnamon

By the time we got to the end of the mulled wine it was a lot more red wine than brandy and the fruit had been simmering away for a good four or five hours. Anyhow, to make the mulled wine jelly I took just over a pint of the cooled mulled wine, mixed with about the same quantity of orange juice, added some sugar to taste – the wine had got very clovey by this stage and it needed counteracting – and then warmed it all gently in a pan. I added twelve sheets of already soaked gelatine, stirred until it was dissolved and then poured into a big glass dish. It took about four hours to set in the fridge.

Christmas pudding icecream
Even without an icecream maker, this was possibly the easiest and richest pudding I’ve ever made. It was actually far too rich the way I made it, so if I were making it again, it would contain

• A small tub of single cream
• A larger tub of ready made custard (about twice as big)
• A quarter of a large luxury Christmas pudding
• Some nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar
• A big glug of Baileys

I started by cooking the Christmas pudding. It was ready made and just popped in the microwave. When I made the icecream first time round, I used about half the pudding but really it was too much. A quarter would have been fine. Once it had cooled down, I crumbled it and set it to one side. The cream was whipped and folded into the custard and then the Christmas pudding, spices and sugar were mixed in. Finally I added big glug of Baileys and stirred.

It all went into the freezer, mixed up with a fork about four hours later than back in the freezer until completely solid. It needed to come out about 20 minutes before serving to be soft enough to serve.