Traditional Scottish Clootie Dumpling
It's Christmas Eve here in Scotland and that means one thing for McGonks - the making of the Christmas clootie dumpling!
What is a 'clootie dumpling', you may well ask. Well, a 'cloot' is a cloth and the dumpling is the cakey goodness that gets boiled inside it to make pudding to have as part of the Christmas dinner. It's a really easy recipe and you can mix and match anything you like into the basic 'goo'. We use raisins or sultanas, but you might choose to include chopped nuts, glace cherries, dried mixed fruit or even grated vegetables, seeds or grains. Our 'secret' family recipe can be found here.
We sent one of the junior McGonks to fetch the cloot this morning and that was when panic struck the tiny, furry inhabitants of Thrift Cottage - they couldn't find the pudding cloth!
"Fear not," declared the wise, red King Ruaidhri, "we'll make a new one!"
With that, he began giving instructions to little 'Rory', while the other McGonks scurried around Thrift Cottage looking for suitable materials.
We still aren't sure if this will work, but we're trying using a freebie pillowslip that had never been used. It's more of a pillow protector than an actual cotton pillow cover, so it remains to be seen if it will hold the Christmas dumpling together for long enough to cook it! We cut our circle the exact same way we do the Tam o'Shanters, only on a much larger scale! Then we'd to rinse it and scald it in boiling water to ensure it was clean. So far, so good - it didn't disintegrate in the boiling water! (McGonks were banished from the area during the use of scalding water.)
Flour, suet, sugar, spices, raisins, syrup and treacle - these all need to be weighed and then mixed together with some milk to turn it into pudding goo! Ruaidhri junior had great fun bouncing about the bowls, jars and tins, making sure all the right ingredients got added in the right combination and in the right quantities. He was most helpful, only falling into the pudding bowl once - thankfully before the ingredients went into it!
Once it was ready to mix with the milk, things go a little bit too sticky and messy for 'Rory' junior, so he was asked to stand back and observe from a safer distance.
The pudding got stirred and mixed, stirred and mixed, adding the milk little by little so it didn't turn into a soggy, muddy looking mess. Once it looked good - not too gloopy, not too doughy, the cloot got rung out so it was nice and damp, laid inside a big bowl and then a sprinkling of flour added, which clung to the damp cloth like frost around a freezing glen.
The pudding mix was then poured, scraping every last morsel into the 'cloot', then it got tied firmly, with enough space for the goo to slowly turn into a big dumpling. You have to be firm and strict with dumplings! They must be tied in tightly, lest thye attempt to escape or, worse still, break free!
Now we have ten McGonks sitting patiently waiting for the dumpling to bump, bubble and boil in the big pan of water, but they'll need to be patient. The dumpling won't be ready to unwrap for at least 3 hours! Let's just hope that it doesn't burst out of its thrifty, homemade cloot before that!
With some festive luck, we'll be back later to update you on progress and, hopefully, with a photo of the McGonks' first attempts at making their own Christmas clootie dumpling!
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