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Having grown up in a country where pudding was usually seen on a stick in Bill Cosby’s hand, it took us a while to get used to the concept of Irish breakfast pudding.

Imagine our confusion when we were told about Irish Christmas pudding.

Christmas pudding is not the chocolate mousse-like substance we know as pudding stateside, nor is it the sausage-like breakfast pudding that graces every Irish breakfast plate. Irish Christmas pudding is something like a cross between a rum cake and a fruit cake. It takes months to prepare and must be about 120% alcohol in content. Seriously, I have no idea how many bottles of whiskey go into each Christmas pudding, but it’s more than one.

Defying the laws of physics, this black-fleshed, fruited, supersweet dessert actually contains more alcohol than if you had just filled a bowl with pure whiskey. I think what happens is, months before Christmas, Irish mothers trap a leprechaun in a jar and force him to cast a spell on their Christmas pudding that allows several bottles of whiskey to be absorbed into its flesh.

In any case, the pudding ferments for a long time before Christmas, with regular whiskey infusions to keep it from lifting its own lid and tottering off to another house in search of wetter pastures. Come Christmas, the pudding is produced, placed upside-down upon a plate and decorated with cream and leaves