Soft and Moist Vegan Christmas Pudding

Christmas isn’t Christmas for many of us without a traditional pudding. I would prefer to make it at home when buying it from local supermarket is the easiest option. But the decision to make it at home gives us the option to choose healthiest ingredients with high nutritive value.

I must say, by making a super easy heathy Christmas pudding we are not compromising on anything -It is very pleasing in appearance, very low in calorie when compared to traditional Christmas pudding or store bought Christmas pudding, full of goodness , soft, moist and truly delectable.

Traditional Christmas puddings are usually made using high caloric ingredients such as alcohol, sugar, eggs and suet. My vegan Christmas pudding is an exception to this and is made using ingredients like chia seeds, almonds and oats. The pudding is sweetened by dry fruits, banana and a table spoon of liquid blackstrap molasses. Even though molasses is a by-product of sugar making process, I consider it as a better form of sugar as it contains some important minerals. On top of that, mellow nutty flavour of molasses binds perfectly with festive flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg and clementine zest.

Ingredients

Method

Soak raisins and chia seeds for at least 45 minutes.

Heat some water in conventional steamer.

Brush 855ml pudding basin with oil.

Mix all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Blend banana and soaked raisins together. Pour this to a large measuring cup. Add soaked chia seeds and liquid blackstrap molasses to it. Stir to combine.

Pour wet ingredients to the mixing bowl and combine well with dry ingredients. Put the mixture into greased basin and cover with double layered aluminium foil. Secure tightly with a piece of string around mouth of pudding basin. Cover with lid and place it in the top of lidded steamer. Reduce the heat to simmer and steam for 3 ½ hours.  Check the water level in the steamer regularly.

Once it is cooked, remove the pudding basin from the steamer carefully. Let it cool a bit and serve immediately or cool completely and keep it refrigerated. Reheat by steaming for an hour before serving.