Heston's Pudding

It was all over the paper today (well, the online version anyway) that Heston Blumenthal's 'Hidden Orange' Christmas pudding has sold out across the country and you can now only get them on eBay, where they are changing hands at a staggering (wait for it) £200.

It was a coincidence that, on this very same day, I had planned to steam the Heston pudding I'd bought a few weeks ago for my sisters and I to test and criticise (with copious amounts of Cointreau cream of course...well, you must suffer these things from time to time).  Split between the three of us, we were theoretically eating £66.66 worth of pudding each.  As lovely as Heston's puddings are hailed to be, I had to admit I was worried it wasn't going to live up to that kind of expectation.  As would anyone actually purchasing it for £200, I would imagine.  Christmas pudding is traditionally served at the end of a meal during which people have already stuffed themselves full to bursting.  Being told that your beautiful, yet rich and cloying dessert cost £200 would make you feel compelled to enjoy it no matter what, wouldn't it?  But I can imagine the host(ess) looking desolately around their kitchen after everybody's fallen asleep, plates needing to be scraped, counting the cost of every rum-soaked raisin going into the bin and thinking with a sigh "it was nice, as Christmas puddings go, but I had to steam the bloody thing for three hours and in the end it was just a Christmas pudding after all...and I didn't even get any of the orange"

And so I steamed the one in my kitchen for three hours, wondering what delights would await.  It seemed like a lot of work, but I was sure it would be worth it.  And it was...sort of.  My sisters enjoyed it, although they said it was a bit "too rich" for them (and I thought, as I always do, how much I hate it when people say that, because I hardly ever think things are too rich for me, I am a glutton, and when people say things like that it reminds me that I'm not a little delicate thing who can subsist on nothing but lettuce leaves).  But then they left, and I scraped their half-empty plates of pudding into the bin and I thought: "yes, very nice, but it was still only a Christmas pudding with an orange plonked in the middle".

But at least I hadn't paid £200 for it.