Yorkshire Pudding

I have the honor of hosting Christmas Dinner this year. There will be 12 of us. I grew up eating a traditional English Christmas Dinner consisting of Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding. Even though I am a vegetarian now, I still consider this to be one of the best dinners on Earth (even though I haven't eaten beef in about 22 years). I wanted my guests to have a fantastic meal the way I remember it.

My English Mum once gave me a British tea towel with a Yorkshire Pudding recipe on it. I've only made Y.P. maybe once or twice myself and since it had been so long, I decided I needed to do a test run before trying to serve it to twelve of us.

Count down to Christmas Dinner: 11 days.

My recipe calls for eggs, flour, salt, milk, water, dripping (or pan spray for us vegetarians). Simple. You mix it, let it sit for an hour, warm up your muffin tin in the oven (with the drippings) and bake. Before it was re-named Yorkshire Pudding it was called Dripping Pudding. Thank goodness that a recipe author rename it!

"A Yorkshire pudding isn't a Yorkshire pudding if it is less than four inches tall, says the Royal Society of Chemistry"; true Yorkshire people would disagree - the modern trend has been to aim for Puddings of almost Souffle proportions." - Wikipedia.

As they bake they rise so impressively. As they are taken out they fall. This is a good thing since it gives a place to put your gravy.

Update: The Y.P. turned out beautifully on Christmas Day!