Christmas Pudding Muffins with Brandy Butter Icing

This recipe is courtesy of Rachel Allen

My family always have left over Christmas pudding so my mum wanted to find a recipe to use it up rather than chuck it out when it got a bit dry. She trawled through the net until she found this one and so I thought I'd share it with you guys :)

This recipe makes 6 muffins, although we found we had too much icing

Ingredients

For the Muffins:

• 1 egg
• 75ml milk
• 30g salted butter
• 2 tsp of sherry, whisky or brandy (We used brandy in our's)
• 125g of leftover Christmas Pudding
• 125g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder (not 1 tbsp like the original recipe said!)
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 75g caster sugar

For the Butter Icing:

• 125g sifted icing sugar
• 50g salted butter, softened
• 1-2 tbsp sherry, whisky or brandy (We used brandy in our's to match what we'd put in the muffin mix)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 350F, 180C or gas mark 4. Line the muffin tins with paper cases.
2. Whisk the egg in a bowl. Add the milk, melted butter and alcohol of choice.
3. Sift the flour, backing powder and mixed spice into another bowl. Add the caster sugar and mix well before adding the cut up leftover Christmas Pudding. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients.
4. Add the wet ingredients and mix well together until a soft batter forms.
5. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.
6. Whilst allowing the muffins to cool prepare the butter icing. Mix together the icing sugar and the butter. Add enough alcohol, about 1 tbsp, to just soften the mixture and make it spreadable.
7. Once the muffins are cooled, spread the icing on top and serve.

They are so yummy! Here's a picture of our's: