Christmas Puddings (Part 2)

Sorry to keep you waiting for the end of the pudding story, I know that you have been on tenter hooks, did she or didn't she? And just in case you can't last to the end of the post, it has a happy ending!
As you know I used my mother's recipe, she sent it to me a couple of years ago, handwritten on some lovely notepaper, notepaper that only a mother of a certain age would own! But stationery apart it works. It's all in ounces and I'm very bad at converting to the gram and when I was buying the ingredients I over-bought on everything! But it means that I have enough dried fruit for my Christmas cake.
Ingeredients: (I'm going to give it to you as my mother wrote it)
6oz Flour
8oz White Breadcrumbs
12oz Brown Sugar
1 lb Currants
8oz Raisins
8oz Sultanas
4oz Cherries (glace)
4oz Mixed Peel
Zest of 1 Lemon
Zest of 1 Orange
8oz Margarine or Butter (I used butter)
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons Brandy or Whiskey
half a pint Guinness
1 teaspoon Mixed Spice
half a teaspoon ground Cinnamon
half a teaspoon ground Nutmeg
These ingredients are enough to make two 2 pint puddings (I bought 2 plastic bowls in John Lewis for £3 each), grease the two bowls and make sure you have greaseproof paper and tin foil for the top.
Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl (all the fruit and breadcrumbs). I managed to get all the dry ingredients in the bowl and was about to add the flour when I realised that I didn't have the breadcrumbs. I was making these at the boyfriends house and he doesn't possess a food processor or a billy whizz (you know that hand held processor?) so I had to use his liquidiser. It works but it's not ideal.
Sieve the flour and the spices in another bowl and add your dry ingredients and mix well. Melt the margarine/butter and leave to cool before adding to the mixture with the beaten eggs and whiskey/brandy. I used whiskey, one from the whiskey society called "Banana Split in a Sauna", I kid you not! My mother put a PS at the bottom of the method "you may not want to put in all the Guinness, you will know if it's wet enough". So leave the Guinness to the end, I used almost all the half pint. My mother was right I did know when it was wet enough.
Now the most important part of making Christmas puddings, the making of the wish. When we were growing up my mother would get us all to stir the mixture and make a wish. I can't remember if the wishes came true but I remember always making sure that I got to make it.
So wishes made fill you pudding bowls and cover with greaseproof paper and tin foil, making a fold in the middle to leave room for air to get in when steaming. My mother always tied twine (you might know it as string) around the bowls making a little handle so that it's easy to get them out of the saucepan. I then steamed them for 6 hours, which just seems like forever. At 8pm on Sunday night they came out and they smelled good, they smelled of Christmas. There are instructions in the recipe for cooking the pudding before serving but you will have to wait until December 25th to hear the end of this story.