Merrie blinked up at me. “Oops. It’s for the pudding. You just said you were going to do anything and everything to help me win the bake-off.”
“I meant, like, helping you cook.”
I set the leek down on the table while Merrie washed her hands.
“I’m impressed you found it,” she said, drying her hands.
I hooked two fingers in her apron waistband and pulled her toward me. “I’m about to impress you even more. Let’s win this bake-off!”
“Praise St. Nick, he has seen the light! Even if he is jealous of a humble woodchopper.”
“Brody is a menace.”
“You are so irrationally possessive.” Merrie giggled. It was adorable.
Ha! She likes me better than Brody!
“First up,” Merrie said. “British pudding.”
“Does it have alcohol?”
“Lots,” she assured me. “And you set it on fire.”
Merrie grinned at my expression. “Christmas baking can be extremely hardcore.”
She put me in charge of mixing up the pudding mixtures as she assembled them in a series of metal bowls. It was not like mixing a cake, at least to my limited knowledge. The final product was more like a casserole with chopped-up bits of fruit, nuts, and vegetables.
“Some of these are going into a mold,” she said, setting down an antique Victorian copper pudding mold shaped like a Christmas tree. “The rest of the fillings will be wrapped in a hearty crust and cheesecloth.”
She scooted rounds of dough over and started filling them with the two meat mixtures.
“The plum Christmas pudding goes in the mound shaped like a gingerbread house,” she said, pointing, “and you need to line the Christmas tree pan with a layer of dough, really press it in the crevices and folds. Er…” She blushed and added hastily, “Not in a, like, sexual way, though.”
“I could if you wanted me to. I’m a bit more advanced in that arena than baking.”
Now she was as red as her hair.
I smirked, draped the dough over the pan, and added the filling. Merrie was ready with another piece of dough for the top.
“What temperature do you need the oven?”
“You clearly don’t watch Mrs. Crocombe on theVictorian Waybaking channel because we are going to boil these bad boys,” she said, tying a thin white piece of cloth over the top of the metal tin and securing it with brown string.
I looked down at the various puddings.
“That sounds horrific.”
“It is,” she said cheerfully, “but that’s how you make a pudding in England. Unfortunately, we don’t have eight hours to boil puddings, so we are using an Instant Pot.”
I picked up the heavy Instant Pot from the cabinet, set it on the table, and started filling it with the puddings.
“No,” Merrie said, taking them back out again. “The flavors are going to get messed up if they’re all in the same pot.”
“I think boiling them is going to take care of that,” I told her.
“More Instant Pots,” she ordered.
After begging my sister for more appliances, the producers carried them over to the table. Merrie plugged them all into an extension cord.
