RMTTB is a bit anal about Christmas.  It has to be just so.  Every.  Bloody.  Year.  For the last bazillion years, our pud has been a variation on Delia’s classic, steeped in a bottle of Guinness.  And why tamper with perfection?

Except that this year our mind started wandering at the thoughts of variations on this timeless theme: with so many great Irish stouts out there, we wondered how much the choice of stout could affect the taste of the pud?  And then we thought about porter – would it really make that much of a difference if we used porter instead of stout??  We knew we’d lost the run of ourselves entirely when minds turned to heretical thoughts such as making a pudding with a Black IPA…

Once the genie was out of the bottle, there was no going back, so this year we’re maing four different puds with four different Irish beers.  We’ve gone with the Black’s of Kinsale Black IPA, 12th Abbey Ruby stout, 8 Degrees Aztec Stout & O’Hara’s Leann Folainn.

We mixed ingredients more or less according to the classic Delia but with lots of cherries and with far more almonds.  We also dispensed with the barley wine and doubled quadrupled the beer amounts.  Soaked for a couple of days, then steamed in the slow cooker.  The puds are maturing before tasting.

Watch this space…. tasting next instalment.

(Ok, we’ve kind of missed the boat on this one and it is kind of late to be writing about Christmas puds, BUT: If they’re not made at this stage though, fear not, it’s never too early to prepare for Chrimbo 2015!!)

RMTTB doesn’t have a big sweet tooth.  If truth be told, we’re probably more likely to opt for cheese rather than chocolate after dinner.  That said, the challenge to bring beer and dessert together at the table has opened us up to new and unexpected avenues of pleasure.

Like many epiphanies, this one happened while idly surfing through the lesser viewed channels of our current cable provider.

We’re dimly aware that Australian Masterchef is one of many ancient re-runs used to pad out the schedules at TLC.  Sometimes we watch, mostly we flick on.  Never again.  Not since we came across the joy that is Chris Badenoch and his beer-themed cuisine.

Badenoch is a beer and offal enthusiast who competed in season 1.  His signature dishes include the wonderfully-titled ‘Beeramisu’: it’s tiramisu made with beer, rather than … whatever it is they normally put into tiramisu.

Hands up, RMTTB hates tiramisu, and banoffee pie and any of the myriad of dense, heavy, overly sweet confections that appear as standard on most dessert menus.  But beeramisu is different.  For a start, it’s made with beer, so the taste is kind of tart and not cloying; plus, it’s whipped to a wonderfully fluffy consistency, so it tastes sort of airy and light.

The recipe is here, and you can see Badenoch on Masterchef here:

This we had to try!

There are so many wonderful stouts coming out of Ireland’s independent breweries, we were kind of spoiled for choice when trying to decide what to test with the recipe.  We settled on 3 with very different tones: Galway Bay’s Buried at Sea chocolate milk stout; 8 Degrees’ Knockmealdown Irish stout; and Franciscan Well’s coffee porter.

Each beer produced a slightly different dish.  The Galway Bay was the sweetest, without being in any way cloying, while the 8 degrees beeramisu had a slightly tart, tangy taste.  The Franciscan well was probably the closest to the classic tiramisu coffee taste, but without any of the heaviness.

In the end, we couldn’t agree on which we liked best, which led us to wonder how many Irish micro & nano-brewed variations on this wonderful recipe there might be out there.

Friends, to the kitchen….!