I've watched with amazement the fuss about Heston Blumenthal's Christmas Pudding (the one with the orange in the middle) and the ridiculous prices they are fetching on eBay now they are sold out at Waitrose.  Has anyone actually seen/tried one (I know it's early to cook one off, especially considering the value of the things)?

I've got a tried and tested Christmas Pud recipe which I've used for years, and I reckon that by poaching an orange (that you've well perforated with a skewer) in a stock syrup, with a few additional orangey/christmassey flavourings, letting it dry, and popping it into the middle of a pud mix, then steaming as usual.
The only thing that I could forsee going wrong is that the orange could collapse during the steaming: Heston is a clever bloke, and I expect his pud followed many experiments in his research kitchen.

Not sure how to post my full guess-recipe (guessipe?) on here, or if I should post a link, but it's on my blog.  Would love comments, ideas, (kindly-intentioned) insults etc