Now bring us some figgy pudding...

Okay, it isn't figgy pudding, but it's close.

Most people who have listened to Christmas songs throughout their life have heard of Christmas pudding. It's one of those old-timey things like caroling and those pictures of you in a snowman sweater when you were seven years old. However, I doubt most people have a tradition for Christmas pudding that extends beyond that absurd line in "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". But then again, not everyone has an awesome Canadian grandmother.

Every year for Christmas, my grandmother whips up a suet pudding for each of her children's families in her tiny kitchen in Anaheim. About midway through December, the pudding arrives in a tin with terrifying pictures of teddy bears or gaudy lights and we all rejoice. Really, it doesn't feel like the holiday season unless there is a suet pudding on the counter.

However, this year my grandmother was too busy to make puddings for all of us, so I was charged with making the one for my family. And surprisingly, it was fairly simple. Flour, bread crumbs, dried fruit, spices, milk, molasses, and of course suet. What's suet you ask? Well, it's the fat that surrounds a cow's kidneys. They don't stock this next to the hamburger meat at the supermarket, but luckily my Dad was able to score some at the local butchery (the aptly named Blood Farm) and brought me home a bag of the stuff. I was then charged with cutting it up, because Blood Farm wouldn't grind it for fear of gumming up their machines.

I never expected there to be so much connective tissue holding that stuff together. And surprisingly, it wasn't wiggly or squishy in any way. It was the same consistency as when you try to use butter straight out of the fridge without letting it thaw first. After I had cut the block of fat into manageable chunks, it went through the food processor to chop it up even further. The result was what can only be described as pink snow:

That was another surprise. It didn't put up a fight while I was chopping. I've met strawberries that were more resistant to the whirling blades of death. Now that that step was over with, it was just a question of combining the ingredients as you would with any cake recipe. The batter was very thick, like a mix between regular cake batter and bread dough, which I then scooped into my mom's pudding steamer.

I put a pyrex bowl at the bottom of our stew pot and nestled the steamer inside. I then popped on the lid (well, rested the lid on top. I have no idea how to lock the thing...) and filled up the pot halfway with water so that it was halfway up the steamer. Then I set it to boil for two hours and let the steam work its magic.

A steamed pudding is hard to describe. It's not at all like Jell-o pudding (that's more of a thick custard). Rather, it's more like  a dense, sticky bread. Well, at least this one is. My mother's lemon pudding (which I hope to get for my birthday next week!) has more of a consistency somewhere between angel food cake and pound cake. Then it's slathered with lemon curd and swimming in vanilla custard. Mmmmmmmm.

Now that this Christmas pudding is done, all that's left is to put on the sauce: a half stick of butter, a quarter cup of brown sugar, a little bit of vanilla, and (if you're my mom) rum.

Okay, it's not a picture out of a magazine. But hey, after waiting all year for this, I don't care how it looks!