FIGGY PUDDING

      Title: FIGGY PUDDING
  Categories: English, Desserts, Puddings
       Yield: 4 Servings
  
       4 oz Suet
       8 oz Flour
     275 ml Milk
       6 oz Dried figs
       2 oz Dried apricots
       1 oz Dried apples
       4 oz Prunes
       2 oz Dates
       3 oz Raisins/sultanas
       1 tb Honey
       1    Wineglass brandy
            -(probably 4-6 fl oz)
     1/4 ts Ginger
     1/4 ts Cinnamon
  
   The day before making the pudding, put the apricots, prunes and
   apples to soak in water and put the raisins and sultanas to soak in
   the brandy.
   
   Put a large saucepan full of water on to boil.  Take the stones out
   of the dates and prunes (if the prunes have them):  butter a large
   pudding basin. Mix the suet and flour, then add the milk gradually to
   make a fairly stiff dough:  roll out and line the pudding basin with
   this dough, leaving sufficient dough aside to make a top.  Melt the
   honey and stir in the ginger and cinnamon:  add the brandy mixture.
   Pack the fruit into the dough-lined basin and pour the honey/brandy
   mixture over it. Put the suet-crust lid on the basin, then cover with
   foil and tie down tightly, leaving a long end of string to make it
   easy to lift out of the saucepan later.  Put the basin in the boiling
   water and cook for two hours, watching to make sure the pan doesn't
   boil dry: add more water if necessary. Turn out onto a dish and serve.
   
   (A word about the pudding basin, for those unfamiliar with them. This
   is a deep, somewhat narrow ceramic bowl, usually holding between 1/2
   liter to a liter.  Old ones have no top, so that you must seal your
   pudding with its own crust, then usually with a layer or two of
   baking parchment and then lastly with foil to keep the steam and
   condensation out, the whole business crumpled down around the top of
   the basin and tied in place with thin string.  This tying is
   something of an art, and is easy to mess up...which is why it's such
   a relief that pudding basins with snap-on lids are now being made,
   both plastic and metal basins now being available on the UK/Irish
   side of the Atlantic. Your local cookware store may have some of
   these.  Otherwise, if Tupperware [or your version of it] can
   withstand being boiled, you should be able to substitute a Tupperware
   bowl with a lid for the pudding basin.)
   
   (Recipe from TAKE A BUTTOCK OF BEEFE, Verity Isitt, Ashford Press
   Publishing, Southampton UK, 1987:  hardcover, ISBN 0-907069-57-6.
   Recipe shared by Diane Duane:
   http://www.ibmpcug.co.uk/~owls/edibilia.html)
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