- A 10 hour slow cooker Christmas pudding taste test,
versus a 10 minute one in the microwave.
(microwave beeps)
Ooh!
(epic music intro)
Hello everyone!
It's Barry here.
Hope you're well.
Do you know what a Christmas pudding is?
Effectively a fruit filled alcohol infused,
cinnamon spicy steamed pudding,
extremely traditional in the UK.
I'd imagine around the world it is too,
but some places might be like, what the heck is that?
Recently we did a video called Fast Versus Last
where we took 48 hour chocolate chip cookies
with burnt butter.
Oh my gosh, they were amazing.
It is work waiting 48 hours for these.
And when it comes to Christmas pudding,
well you can take a very long time with that.
Fast versus last could become a playlist
because today we are comparing a 10 hour slow cooker
Christmas pudding taste test versus
a 10 minute one in the microwave.
10 hours versus 10 minute Christmas pudding.
And we're actually gonna make it,
show you the literal comparison In the same bowl.
My wife, Mrs. B, at the end of the video tomorrow
will taste test them.
She has no idea which one's which
to see if it is worth it,
if there's any taste difference.
And if you can get away with
an emergency microwave Christmas pudding.
Now we just had a little chat off camera, haven't we?
And when it comes to Christmas cooking,
particularly like Christmas cakes,
you can start to make the cake well in advanced
by soaking the fruit for a few days,
a few weeks, months, or even years.
And the alcohol in it can help preserve the fruit.
Basically by soaking the fruit you infuse
these cinnamon spicy flavours,
it absorbs some of that fluid,
makes it plump and softens it.
So you can really push it as long as you like.
And I've already started this recipe yesterday, in fact.
There it is.
Yep. Right there is my mixed fruit medley
for the slow cooker version that I did around
about five o'clock yesterday afternoon.
So to soak the fruit,
what you do is grab yourself a big old mixing bowl.
It can be a little bit bigger
than the final one that we're gonna use.
Add in that dried fruit,
which if you didn't know is a combination of raisins,
sultanas, currents and a little bit of a mixed peel,
which you can buy separately,
but they just tend to sell it in these mixed bags.
These are some cherries that I've just chopped up
very very roughly.
They're a little bit sticky 'cause they're sugar coated.
But get them in.
Although it might take a bit of time
to get the last little bit in.
We're gonna get the zest of an entire orange on there.
Pour in some orange juice.
It might not look like much at the moment.
And of course if you want
a completely non-alcoholic version,
it's best to totally make this the day before
you want to eat it,
because alcohol helps preserve it.
You can omit the brandy which actually goes in now,
which I can confirm-
To balance that out,
we're gonna add in some dark brown sugar,
and then we've got two lots of spices.
One is a medley of mixed spices,
two teaspoons of that and one teaspoon of cinnamon.
The sugar will start to dissolve already,
primarily into that orange juice.
Keep going, stirring it round until it kind of settles
and you'll be surprised.
It's not a huge water level, it's not the ocean,
but it's the fruit was in there and it smelled pretty good.
Cover it in wrap master style cling film.
And then well, basically shove it over there.
That was my late afternoon yesterday,
and that was around about 17 hours ago.
So that's already had a 17 hour soak.
I'm gonna leave it.
There is a slight smell in here from that
despite it being wrapped.
So although I'm calling this 10 hour slow cooker
versus 10 minute microwave,
really the steps started yesterday
to really give it that soaking,
and you can leave it even longer if you want.
So I can't really do many more steps right now,
but what I'm gonna tell you is what happens
is with the slow cooker,
but you're basically gonna put it
into a slow cooker water bath.
So we're gonna fill it about three quarters with water.
I'm telling you this now because when I do it later
after I get back from football,
about half past 10 tonight,
I'm gonna be doing those steps when my family are in bed
so that we get that overnight 10 hour cook.
So yeah, we'll fill it with water to the line there
but there are some other ingredients
that are gonna go with our soaked fruit.
So again, with it being dark later,
I'm gonna summarise what they are so
that then at half past 10 tonight
I can just shove 'em in,
turn the slow cooker on,
and then we'll see you in the morning.
Honestly, it smells like Christmas in there, so good.
It's only when you walk back into a room sometimes
after making something like this so you're like, oh my gosh.
But that actually, the juice in it's thickened up already.
It's gone a bit syrupy,
but we'll hopefully see a little bit.
It's not being pitched black later
but it's when all this is gonna get added.
But I'll show you what I can.
Well one thing I can't show you unless
I stick it in lemon juice,
I don't really wanna do that, is an apple.
I'm just, this is an apple,
I'm just gonna grate it.
Okay, so that'll be great.
Some plain flour to help thicken it.
Now this is some suet, in fact this is vegetable suet.
It's quite popular suet in general.
Old school stuff in pastry.
I think actual proper suet is a rendered fat of some kind.
But the vegetarian version is made with oils and rice.
I think it's rice flour.
So I've got us try and stay as traditional
as I can but I fancy doing the veggie one for Phoebe,
'cause like I say as bad as these turn out,
that's my problem to deal with because
these are gonna be our genuine Christmas puddings
for Christmas.
We've got some sherry, which is very festive,
which is effectively a fortified wine.
There's lots of different versions of that.
Two eggs, and I'm just gonna whisk these anyway
and they're gonna help bond,
they're gonna help fuse, group hug the Christmas pudding.
And we've also gotta add in that festive thing
of some treacle.
Oh my gosh, quite a sugary thing indeed.
It's basically molasses for those of you
that are like what's treacle?
The last thing we've got though to help pad it out again
and fill those gaps is some bread slices
where I've just removed the crusts.
Where's that Christmas smell coming from?
Ah, is it the sherry?
All of those ingredients for the microwave version
are gonna be exactly the same measurements
and exactly the same, no different.
The main difference is in the fruity thing
which I'll show you tomorrow.
So other than that, I'm gonna basically jump now
to about half past 10 at night
where we bung all of this in together with our dried fruit,
shove it in our final bowl,
where'd I put the bowl?
And then I'll go to bed and then we'll do it all again
in the morning in the microwave.
Compare it.
I'm really excited!
But now I've just gotta literally wait and tidy up.
So see you later.
(whispering) Hello.
It's actually 11:00 PM I did score six goals
at football though and we won by two goals.
("Silent Night")
♪ Silent night ♪
♪ Holy night ♪
- The fruit feels more plump.
♪ All is calm ♪
♪ All is bright ♪
♪ Round yon virgin, mother and child ♪
♪ Holy infant so tender and mild ♪
♪ Sleep in heavenly peace ♪
(aluminium foil crackling)
♪ Sleep in heavenly peace ♪
- Good morning everybody.
It is day three for me.
One thing I forgot to mention,
the water that I added to this water bath was warm.
Okay? To kickstart the slow cooker
I've come in this morning,
we can see all the sort of moisture
on the top of the lid there trying to escape.
And the bowl that we wanna make
the microwave version is in there,
but we'll keep it in there just for the time being.
In fact, I could keep that slow cooking away.
It's a little bit like a sous vide in a way,
what we've done.
We could keep it in there for days.
But I need that bowl for the microwave version.
But first of all, we can do the first step where
we left the fruit overnight for that one.
Well we've got two choices, we can either omit this step
entirely and bung it in the bowl,
or we can kind of bodge the overnight process
by sticking it in a pan.
And that is exactly what we're gonna do.
But you'll notice this is actually
three times the quantity of the orange juice.
Wow. Look at that sugar soaking in.
We'll give this a little stir off the heat for the moment
to turn it into one fairly consistent festive puddle.
Look how watery that is.
But what's gonna happen is we are basically
gonna bodge that overnight fruit step
by simmering this down over heat right now.
I'm feeling really Christmasy right now.
This is zesty, spicy, fruity,
real nice waft of Christmas coming through that pan.
Simmering away gently,
and hopefully by doing this it's gonna be our bodge version
of plumping up that fruit.
So about five minutes in total of doing this.
And you should have some fluid left.
(loud bang)
Sugar, I nearly knocked that pan then.
All that fruit does look plumped
and looks really vibrant as well.
You can see, and especially as it cools down more
we've still got a little bit of fluid in there,
quite close to what we had the other day
after the overnight absorption.
But it has gone again, more syrupy,
which is exactly how we had it the other day.
So potentially we've bodged that entire overnight step.
We're at the stage right now where I need the bowl in there.
This can cool down and I can get my other ingredients
ready which are exactly the same
as what I put in that last night.
The grated apple, the two beaten eggs, the treacle,
the plain flour, the sherry, the breadcrumbs, and the suet.
Exactly the same amount of quantities.
I'm just gonna mix this bit now
because I found actually it was quite hard to see
how dissolved the flour was
and when it's like this when there's a lot less fruit in it,
you can really spot it.
I think we're okay in the end
but I thought I'd finished stirring,
and then every now and then a little pocket of flour
a bit like that just appeared.
And now we pour in our emergency plumped fruit.
And I think this is gonna be similar to yesterday.
That is it, ready for our bowl that's in the slow cooker.
Ooh, that's warm.
Ooh!
Oh my gosh.
Look at that colour!
Oh, that's amazing.
Oh, that's really nice.
Oh wow.
Oh!
Oh, crikey I burnt my nose.
(laughing)
Oh, can you see the greaseproof paper doing its job?
Oh look, can you, I dunno if it's showing?
It's self loosening.
Look. You can see it.
(laughing)
Oh, here we go.
Oh wow!
Yes. I want to reuse you again
because cutting a circle was annoying for me.
Oh! I'm gonna give this a quick wash.
Ooh! And then we'll go again.
But this time in the microwave,
gonna cover this in foil,
keep it in my oven on a very low temperature
just so it stays warm for a perfect comparison.
It is looking absolutely identical to the one last night.
Well, I mean it should,
it scared me how yellow it was last night
and it's still looking yellowy now.
I guess like you say, it's the fat of the suet
and the eggs cooking off, but can it do it in 10 minutes?
So more baking parchment on top.
And then just a little plate to act as a sort of lid
to hopefully keep it down and keep all the steam inside.
Effectively we're doing a bodge steam.
And there it is.
(microwave beeping)
All right.
Less than a minute left.
And that thing is angry.
There is some serious sizzling going on but,
against what I thought would happen
it has not risen up at all.
Stayed in place.
And I think it's set and I think visually
there is a difference.
(microwave beeps)
Ooh!
Off this comes.
Oh wow!
(whispering) It's, it's cooked.
But there is a slight colour variation to be honest.
I was keeping my eye on it and it was yellower
for until about two minutes before the end.
Then it's suddenly darkened.
Okay. I think visually, side by side,
they all look different.
It's not too bad your side actually.
I've actually managed to repair it quite well and look-
fast, last.
Pretty much the same recipe.
It's quite the difference.
All right.
I'm not gonna do anything crazy like light it with brandy.
Done that before.
Very fun.
But I will give it a light dusting of icing sugar.
Nice.
So if you've enjoyed this video, don't forget to give it
a thumbs up and subscribe if you're not already.
And let me know down below if you have any
fast versus last idea comparisons
that you would like to see.
And maybe I'll bring it to life.
Look at that.
It's like Sandra Bullock in that Netflix thing.
Yeah, don't worry he still misses me.
(laughing)
That is our dog.
Yeah, that is not me.
(she laughs)
Okay. Are you ready for the first one?
- I can't see where the spoon is.
- What? Oh wow.
We went for the whole lot.
Amazing.
- Hmm. Yeah.
- Okay. And here is the other one.
- Hmm.
- Now is when you say that you don't like Christmas pudding.
- They both taste very different.
- Do they?
- Yeah.
That one you've just given me.
- Yeah?
- It's quite sharp.
- Okay.
- I can really taste the alcohol.
The second one I got that sharpness
and then it was quite like soft and like cakey in a way.
And then the first one was you couldn't taste much brandy.
It might have just been the mouthful I had.
And it was, it was like,
I felt like I was just eating a mouthful of raisins.
- Right. (laughing) So that is quite a concise summary, Mrs.
Which one did you prefer?
- Oh, I think the first one.
- Okay. The first one?
- Yeah.
- All right.
Remove your blindfold Mrs. B.
Because you had the microwave one first.
- No!
- Yeah.
- Did I really?
- Yeah.
- The only thing I'm thinking,
if you didn't like the strength of the alcohol
is some of that brandy might have simmered off.
Yeah. When I cooked it like that.
But you know I still added sherry in there.
- That one, that second one.
Now you said it was the slow cooked one.
- Yeah?
- It was quite like soft.
- Yeah. Was it like, in fact, lemme have a taste.
- Why don't you try it?
- So this is the microwave one on the right, okay?
- It does look like it's been microwaved.
- It does, doesn't it?
- Yeah.
Yeah see that's really dense and tough and quite rubbery.
Hmm!
- That's nice.
- It's quite dry but it almost like the breadcrumbs
that I put in there have become one of the priority
ingredients and bonded it together.
It is more like a cake.
- Yeah, I do. Maybe that's why I prefer it.
Try that one.
You'll see what I mean.
- Yeah?
- The flavours are a lot more intense.
- Mm! That's a Christmas pudding.
That is a Christmas pudding and that is a cake.
- That's a Christmas cake.
Yeah, that's right.
(both laughing)
- The flavours in there are deeper, intense.
The fruit feels more plumped.
- Yeah.
- It's much more like moist as well, rather than that.
That's very dry and stodgy and cake and like rubbery.
- That's too strong for me.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- But honestly that is like a standard Christmas-
Do you not like Christmas pudding?
- I do. I can't really remember any of it once a year.
- Remember-
- I don't have it in July for my birthday. (laughing)
- No I think they're very, very good.
I think that is probably the,
yeah like you said, more like Christmas pudding.
I hate brandy and I can't taste the brandy.
I can taste the Christmas pudding-ness
of that brandy essence in there,
But honestly I'm not getting like, oh my gosh!
- Are you not?
- No!
- I did.
- Oh, okay.
- Maybe you've been secretly drinking it all morning.
That's why you can't taste it.
I think you could get away with
making that one and serving it.
- Well it sounds like it. Yeah.
This is our Christmas pudding now.
We're gonna have a 10 minute microwave Christmas pudding.
- We're gonna be picking at it all day.
- I, I am not gonna be picking at that.
I like it but it's, it's quite bland.
the intensity Of the sug- there's a lot of sugar in there
from the fruit and the sugar we added.
You just don't get it.
Like there's apple in there as well, and the cherries,
there's no like punch to it.
Whereas this, like I say, it's like a big bowl of moistness,
and fruit and flavour and spice and warming and comforting
which is what Christmas is all about.
- You need a bit of marzipan and rolled icing in that.
- Oh! No.
If you had to have one, which one do you like?
Okay.
This is amazing.
(both laughing)
No, this is great.
I, for me, the more, like it is worth the wait,
develop the flavours.
- Maybe 'cause it's not got any cream or custard with it.
- (laughing) Okay mate, that's a good point that you do
like lather that stuff on there.
- Or ice cream?
- Mate. You can have what you want with it honestly.
(continues laughing)
Well in conclusion, if you want an emergency,
slightly Christmas-esk cake rubbery version,
that's Mrs. B's favourite.
- Yeah, but I guess this one is the winner
for natural Christmas pudding.
- Ah. That's all I'm gonna say about that.
I personally preferred it
but why didn't you guys give it a go?
And it's completely up to you.
But I believe it is definitely worth the wait.
So, and actually we made it in a slow cooker.
That's awesome.
- I was gonna say, I'm really really impressed
that you did it in a slow cooker.
- Yeah, we normally like make our ham at Christmas
in that, but I mean, yeah.
Awesome. Thanks a lot for watching folks.
Hope you found this fascinating.
I'll see you later.
Bye Mrs. B.
- Bye-Bye.
♪ Cooking is nice ♪
♪ 'Cause cooking is nice ♪
♪ 'Cause cooking is nice, nice, nice ♪
- So conclusion.
If you are a Christmas pudding connoisseur, go for the last.
If you are more about the texture,
and you're just gonna dump cream on it
and you want an emergency get outta trouble thing,
go for the fast.
Good luck!