Christmas Pudding Chocolate Sweets!

Nigella Lawson is a cooking DIVA... I love this woman... Okay so like most TV Chef's she has a few mad ideas... but sometimes she hits gold... and this is one of them. I caught this recipe last year, and set about making them as Christmas presents for my family and friends since I was out of work (ingredients and wrappings can't have cost me more than a fiver!... BARGAIN)

Anyway, I have decided to show you wonderful Instructiblites how to make them, I do have a link to one page which gives Nigellas own log about how to make them... It's a tad tedious... but if you want to give it a look here you go:

http://www.styleathome.com/food-and-entertaining/recipes/recipe-nigella-s-christmas-puddini-bonbons/a/18992/

I think that they make great presents, or an alternative to a Christmas card! So with that in mind I'm going to enter them into the competition! WISH ME LUCK

Nigella thinks you need the following:
125g best-quality dark chocolate, finely chopped
350g leftover, or freshly cooked and cooled, Christmas pudding
60ml sherry
2 x 15ml tablespoons golden syrup
Glacé cherries
125g best-quality white chocolate, finely chopped

PERSONALLY I prefer to do things a little more haphazardly.
I used:

2 Bars of Value Chocolate (one plain, and one milk.... two bars of one flavour would do... I just used what I had)
1 Bar of white Chocolate
1 value Christmas pud
2 table spoons (or there about) of Golden syrup
Red and green Jelly diamonds/ Fruit pastels

Hardware:
Saucepan
Pyrex bowl
Mixing Bowl
Spoons, and forks
Non-Latex-Non-powdered gloves
Plate
Spatula
Refrigerator

See this REALLY annoys me, when someone makes something for you to CONSUME and they don't bother to wash their hands before hand... So I have decided to make a point of a few things that TV Chefs or whatnot don't seem to be able to do

# Remove any rings/ Jewellery that may come in contact with the food
# Wash your hands before you cook
# After handling Eggs, its good practice to wash your hands (Stops the spread of Salmonella and such)
# DO NOT Lick or taste off a spoon THEN put it back into the bowl you took the sample from... EWW... If I wanted your germs I would kiss you!

Before I start sounding like a rambling germ freak, I'm sure you'll agree this is all common sense... But some people just don't ...get... that its not hygienic

Well what can I say... If your posh, chuck your Christmas pud into a food processor to crumb it up... I just used a fork... It did the trick ... EVENTUALLY

How you melt your chocolate is up to you, I personally prefer to put two pieces in my mouth and wait for it to dissolve ;)

hehe

Fill a sauce pan with maybe an inch of water( Just enough so that when you put your pyrex bowl in, the boiling water won't over flow)

When the water has boiled take off the heat (and turn off the flame... Don't burn down the house now!)

Place your Pyrex bowl inside the sauce pan

Chuck your chocolate into the pyrex bowl

Using a fork stir your chocolate until you have a gooey melted yummy mess

Resist urges to eat the chocolate, or lick the fork ;)

Now it's time to put two large table spoons of Syrup into your meted chocolate, and give it a good stir.

Now lick your syrup spoon... and resist the urge to eat your melted chocolate/syrup

If your mix of chocolate and syrup has lasted this long, your doing well!... Pour the chocolate and syrup into a large mixing bow (where hopefully you placed your crumbed Christmas pud).

I gave my mix a bit of a stir with a fork, then gloved up and went nuts mixing it by hand

If you don't have the gloves on be prepared to be CONSTANTLY washing your hands

Now using your gloves (seriously it's not worth taking them off) roll your mixture into balls I wouldn't make them TOO big, as they are rather rich and sweet.... I wouldn't roll them any bigger than say a 2p piece in diameter. Once rolled place them on a plate and continue to resist the urge to eat them

Now to firm them up, I placed the balls into the fridge... you don't have to ... but I found it a lot easier to put the decorations on

also... look how sophisticated I am... White Wine...Parmesan... and Brie? hehe... Just as well you can't see the shelf with angel delight and larger ;)

You know you don't want to face it... but now is the MOST logical time to do it... go on... go wash those dishes we'll wait...

Oi... come on now don't procrastinate!


Okay so I bunged it all in the dish washer too... but I won't tell if you don't!

At this point I opened my Jelly diamonds to find that I had used all the green ones.... So I frantically drove down to the shops, picked up a bag of sweets and prayed it contained some green ones! Funny story... I almost ran over an old fella' who decided that the best time to walk behind my car was JUST as I was reversing into a parking bay... I should of hit him to teach the old fool a lesson /end rant ;)

What you need do here, is cut some red and green either glacé cherries or sweets into shapes that could be mistaken for holly...

So basically one round or square red bit... and two either triangular or rectangular green bits... If your unsure... see the pictures

Go on... go melt your white chocolate, using the same method as in step 5 (just don't put any syrup in it)

Splodge a bit of white chocolate on the top of the little round pudding shape (as if it was the white sauce on a real pudding) and add your holly decorations that you will have cut out in the previous step

I found that using a pair of cocktail sticks to put on the jelly sweet decoration stopped them from getting stuck to my fingers and subsequently being eaten

When your white chocolate has set, It's time to wrap these little Christmas treats up... I find a bit of coloured cellophane and some decorate ribbon works wonders... but your clever Instructiblites will probably have all sorts of fancy origami boxes and such to display them in

I find that if you put them on a plate and take them into work, you can save yourself on time and money wrapping them hehe


Hope you enjoyed this I'ble... I love making these things, although they are a little fiddly, I love seeing how much people enjoy them

Cheerio guys and gals... Stay tuned for my other Christmas sweet instructable hopefully coming tomorrow