After much shenanigans, indecisiveness and a public vote, I’ve decided to ignore the weight of popular opinion and invoke the time-honoured female prerogative of changing my mind. Due to a heady combination of several facts, including the discovery that crackers are stupidly expensive (yes, yes, I know you all warned me), I’ve overthrown my original idea and it’s going to be.....Christmas puddings instead. Woohoo!

A few ground rules: I’ve discovered most supermarkets do an individual person sized pudding – I’m mainly doing these so I don’t turn into a total bloater by the time the big day comes around, plus the fact they can be microwaved in, literally, a minute. This does limit the section a bit however, I will take requests for family size ones but it’ll have to be over a weekend for the requisite 2 hour steaming time. If any of you actually care that much that is.

I’m also doing these ‘clean’ with no accoutrements of cream, custard or brandy butter. I’m keeping the variables down to a minimum and I believe it’s more important to know what the pudding tastes like rather than the topping.

Anyway, enough caveats, loosen your waistbands people, here we go, welcome to the Christmas Pudding Club.