Christmas puddings

Our Matthew Walker business has been making premium, top quality Christmas puddings in Derbyshire since 1899 and we are the leaders in this specialist market.

We make our Christmas puddings in Heanor, where Matthew Walker established his first purpose built manufacturing site and we employ 120 permanent staff work at the site year round - a figure that rises as Christmas approaches to around 300 people.

As well as producing 'The Pudding', our award winning Matthew Walker brand, we also create own label puddings, made to individual recipes for the major retailers in the UK and, under license, for prestigious customers such as Duchy Originals and Harrods.

Our puddings are also sold abroad through a partnership with Walkers of Scotland.

 

 

We’re always looking for ways to improve our puddings, but still use many of the same ingredients, cooking methods and recipes today. that can be found in old cookery books. It’s this insistence on tradition and a passion for sourcing the best ingredients that makes us the top Christmas pudding manufacturer in the world.

Steeped in tradition

Christmas is all about tradition and most of us don’t want anything radically new – we want our pudding to look and taste the same as last year - only better.

And while most households don’t have the time to make or steam a pudding, they still want one that tastes as if they could have made in their own kitchen. And, because everyone wants to put the best pudding they can on the table, many customers go out of their way to put a superior Christmas ‘pud’ in their shopping basket.

That’s why we cook our Christmas puddings the way you would at home. We hand sort the fruit, mix ingredients lightly and fill them into basins. The puddings are then steamed traditionally and allowed to cool naturally to give them a dark, moist texture. All the festive cook has to do is heat them up - either in the traditional way using an oven or by steaming or, for those in a hurry, by taking the quick route and using the microwave.

Making the best better

We’re always looking to improve our puddings – for instance, by including new and more exotic fruits such as Chilean flamed raisins, apricots and golden sultanas, and brandy. We pack more and more fruit and nuts into our luxury ranges and to meet the changing needs of our customers, we’ve introduced more organic ranges.

Most people forget about diets at Christmas but for those with special requirements we produce a range of special recipe puddings, such as gluten-free, dairy-free, and low fat. We even close down normal production for two weeks to make our nut-free pudding. For those with less traditional tastes we also offer a range of alternatives such as sponge puddings with toffee, caramel or chocolate sauce, a Stollen Christmas pudding or a Rum Nicky Victorian Sponge.

So, as you plan your diet on New Year’s Eve spare a thought for the team at Matthew Walker who are already working on great tasting puddings for your Christmas table next year!