Healthy Christmas Pudding

Serves: 4 people.

Preparation Time: 10 minutes to prep, 1 hour and 45 minutes to cook.

• A knob of organic butter
• 1½ whole oranges roughly chopped (include the skin)
• 300g pitted dates
• 200g pitted prunes
• ⅓ cup coconut oil
• 1¼ cups water
• 1½ cups dried currants
• 200g organic dried apricots, finely chopped
• 100g pitted prunes, roughly chopped
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 350g almond meal
• 1 tsp vanilla bean powder or paste
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp allspice
• ¼ tsp clove
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• ¼ tsp sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 190C / 374F / Gas Mark 5.
2. Grease a medium sized pudding bowl with the organic butter.
3. Mix the prunes, dates, orange and water. Add to a saucepan and bring to boil.
4. Simmer the mixture for 10 minutes or until the water has evaporated and the dates have formed into a thick paste (the oranges should still be intact, this is okay).
5. Stir through the coconut oil and leave to cool.
6. Add the cooled date mix into a food processor and mix until smooth.
7. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and add in the chopped apricots, prunes, currants, almond meal, vanilla, cinnamon, allspice, clove, nutmeg, salt and eggs. Mix items well.
8. Pour mixture into your prepared pudding bowl.
9. Place the pudding bowl into a deep baking tray (we use a roasting tray). Now pour in hot water until backing tray is around ½ to ¾ full.
10. Cover the tray and pudding with a layer of baking paper and foil. Check that the tray is completely covered so that no steam can escape.
11. Bake mixture for 1 hour and 30 minutes.
12. Carefully remove the tray from the oven.
13. Remove foil and paper from tray.
14. Loosen the edges of the pudding with a knife and remove pudding from tray.

Please let us know how you get on with this recipe!

If you have any ideas or alternatives, add them in the comments box below!

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