How can I make a rich, moist, vegan Christmas pudding?

Question

I'm looking for a tested recipe that produces a really rich-tasting, moist, dark, nutty vegan Christmas pudding.

_{I'll be making an alcohol-free pudding, so I'd prefer an alcohol-free recipe, but I can adapt if needed.}

Answer 1

As you can use vegetable suet and many recipes don't use milk, presumably the main issue is the eggs. Egg-free christmas pudding recipes aren't uncommon-- examples:

• From the Guardian (also no alcohol or gluten; vegetable suet would be easier than grating pure veg fat but would bring in gluten that they didn't want)
• A 1940s recipe (this calls for alcohol or milk. If it can handle either of those, it could easily handle a different liquid)

The second recipe is interesting in that it uses nothing normally considered a binding ingredient (the first uses banana). But my Christmas pudding (which do contain egg) tend to crumble anyway; there's just too much fruit for them to fully bind together. So you may well be able to simply omit the egg or add a little more liquid, unlike in a cake recipe.

Christmas pudding is very amenable to subsitutions, so long as the total weight of fruit/nuts is the same you can be very flexible about the proportions. If you want moist and dark, be sure to use a recipe that includes treacle (or molasses).

Answer 2

Here's what I actually did. It worked great!

Vegan and Gluten-Free Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

• about 1/8 nutmeg (Use grated whole nutmeg. Don't use ground nutmeg. If the nutmeg is hollow, discard it)
• 1 sweet apple, grated
• juice squeezed from a clementine/satsuma/small orange
• 1 clove, well crushed
• seeds from 3 green cardamoms, well crushed
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• about 1/3 cup coconut oil
• about 1/2 cup coconut sugar
• about 3 tbsp date syrup
• 1 ripe banana, peeled and mashed
• about 8 unsulphured dried apricots, chopped
• about 8 dates, chopped
• about 5 soft dried figs, chopped
• handful sultanas, washed
• handful currants, washed
• about 12 Brazil nuts, chopped
• about 1/4 cup ground almonds
• about 1/4 cup rice flour
• about 1/2 cup instant polenta (coarse maize meal)

Instructions

1. Add all ingredients except flour to a pan and heat gently, stirring to mash, until the coconut oil is fully liquid and everything is well combined.
2. Sprinkle the rice flour and polenta over the surface and mix well. Stir until the mixture forms a thick, wet batter that more-or-less stays together. If it is too dry, add some non-dairy milk or water. If it is too wet, add more polenta.
3. Transfer the mixture to a pudding basin or deep cereal bowl
4. Place an upturned saucer or small plate at the bottom of a suitably sized saucepan (the pudding bowl must fit inside and you must be able to put the lid on the pan) and put the pudding bowl onto it. Cover the top of the pudding bowl with foil. Add boiling water to the pan, so it comes about 1/3 of the way up the bowl. Put the lid on the pan.
5. Turn on the heat and simmer on low heat for about 4 hours