"Heston's Christmas Pudding" My take on it anyway

I keep seeing reports on how amazing Heston's Christmas Pudding is and how much they sell for on ebay. In the interests of good taste, food investigation and a shameless traffic generating blog post I am creating one.

Stage one ... candied orange:
Actually I'm going to candy some mandarins ... they're quicker and, for me, they taste better for this dish.
Four mandarins, prick a dozen or so times all over and remove any stalk, trat an orange the same way.

Place in saucepan and mix roughy 250g icing sugar and 350ml water and pour over. The mandarins will float so make a cartouche to cover them ... or just use a small pan lid with a vent hole like so ...

Heat to 80-90C and leave at this heat for about 2 hours  ...
What we have now is a sticky candied fruit, slightly translucent and glossy, I added a small orange and lemon to flavour the final pudding, the liguor has a wonderful frangrance a citrus flavour so I've added some orange juice and reduced it to make a citrus sauce for the puds. I then placed the fruit in a low oven for an hour to dry the peel and 'candy' it

When the fruit has dried the lemons are more candied than the mandarins, I diced a mandarin and some lemon to add to the pudding mix

The liquor is reducing nicely on low:

Now to the pudding ...
Ingredients:

• 2 slices of brown bread, crust removed
• 20g Plain Flour
• 30g Brown sugar
• 50g Butter
• 1 Egg
• 1tsp Bicarb
• 1tsp mixed spice
• 2 tsp Orange marmalade
• 2 tsp Ginger conserve
• Diced candied orange and lemon

Blitz bread to fine crumbs before adding dry ingredients and mix.
Add other ingredients and mix for a short time with a wooden spoon.
Place several Tbsp of mix in based of a buttered pudding bowl.
Place the mandardin on top of the mix and fill around and over, till the bowl is approx 3/4 filled.

Clingfilm the top of the pudding dish and place in a baking tray with a couple of inches of water in the tray, bake in a low oven (140C) for approx 70 minutes.

The end result was spot on ... which was a relief  ... the pudding was delicous and the sauce ... oh my god the sauce was good ... toffee, citrus, bitter peel ... heaven

The fruit could be candied for longer, overnight in a low oven perhaps, personally I like it like it is with a citrus kick still ... but if I'm honest candied fruit is not high on my list of things I choose to eat ... I liked this pudding and will be making it on my cookery course this week and at home for christmas.

A few people on Twitter have asked how much ... Heston's was £13, at a rough guess this costs about £1 and 20 minutes work over a day. I won't be selling these though ... go on make it yourself ... its easy !