Recipe

Serves:  4 people | Prep time:  30 minutes | Cooking time:  20 minutes

British | Vegetarian | Dessert

Ingredients

• 60g Self-Raising Flour
• 1 tbsp Cocoa Powder  
• ½ tsp Mixed Spice
• 30g Breadcrumbs
• 30g Dark Brown Soft Sugar
• 150g Mixed Dried Fruit
• 100g Vegetable Spread
• Zest of 1 Tangerine & 2 tsp of Juice
• 1 tbsp Golden Syrup
• 50g Cherries, chopped into quarters  
• 4 Dried Apricots, finely sliced
• 25g Mixed Nuts, chopped
• 1 Egg, beaten
• 3 tbsp Milk
• 3 tbsp Brandy

To cover the puddings

• 500g Marzipan
• 250g Icing Sugar
• 2 Egg Whites
• 100g Fondant Icing
• 2 drops Red Food Colouring
• 2 drops Green Food Colouring
• 4 mini pudding bowls (or you can used 4 small tins emptied, washed and labels removed)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
2. Sift the flour, cocoa and mixed spice into a bowl.
3. Add the dried fruit, cherries, apricots, nuts, sugar and breadcrumbs to the bowl and mix well. Melt the vegetable spread in the microwave in 10 second bursts, until fluid.
4. Add the syrup, milk, brandy, egg, tangerine zest and juice to the vegetable spread and add this to the dry mixture and stir well, until combined.
5. Pour the mixture into 4 well-greased mini pudding bowls, or lined tins, and bake in a pan of water for around 10-15 minutes, until they spring back up when touched.
6. Once cooled, turn upside down to remove the tins and trim the top into a pudding shape.
7. Roll out the marzipan into one big sheet and cut out 4 circles to cover each pudding.
8. Mix the egg whites with the icing sugar until you have stiff royal icing and then spoon the icing over the puddings and using a fork, create the spiky texture.
9. Colour half the fondant red and the other half green, using the food colouring, and cut out 8 holly leaves and 12 berries and put these on the top of your puddings and serve.