When I was at primary school, I used to go home with my friend Mandy – she lived just across the road – for a drink of squash before walking back to my house. Mandy’s mum seemed to revel in having children – there were four of them squashed into a small cottage – as the place was full of board games (we didn’t have any), books and, at Christmas, felt elves and snow globes you could wind up. It was a thrill, a happily chaotic den of magic.

One year, in the run-up to Christmas, Mandy’s mum gave me the evidence I needed to keep believing. I was seven and had just started to think that the old guy in the red coat was really my dad. Things started to appear on top of the wardrobe in early December. I couldn’t reach up there but tried to get a look by jumping on the bed. Mandy’s mum, though, showed me slides in their slide viewer – incontrovertible evidence. 

There were pictures of Father Christmas and the reindeers, another of the sleigh flying through a starry sky. Although they looked otherworldly, the colours those of a Technicolor melodrama, they were also believable. I mean, these were photographs. It was 1969 and we’d landed on the moon – I believed what I saw. I could feel a warmth spreading across my shoulders as I looked: he did exist.

But there was another image that really captured my imagination. It was a picture of sugar plums dancing above a child’s head as she lay in bed. Whenever I hear the phrase ‘visions of sugar plums’ – it’s in Clement Clarke Moore’s ’Twas the Night Before Christmas – I smile. 

In his poem the visions dance in their heads – they were dreaming. In the slide I saw, the sugar plums were dancing in the air above the girl’s head. Sweet things at Christmas, any alternative to the pudding, must have something of this magic.

Sugar plums were a kind of confectionery, a comfit, a jewel-like sweet made by adding successive layers of glossy sugar syrup to a central kernel (it could be cardamom or caraway seeds or an almond). These were popular from the 17th to the 19th century, but they weren’t plums at all. Elvas plums, a Portuguese speciality, are real ‘sugar plums’.

They’re made with cooked greengages that are soaked in a thick sugar syrup for six weeks. They’re expensive but, for those who aren’t keen on Christmas pudding, they can form part of a glorious array – nuts in their shells, Muscat grapes, candied chestnuts, prunes that you’ve stuffed with a nugget of marzipan and some candied citrus, then dipped in dark chocolate. If you can’t lay on this kind of treat on 25 December, when can you?

There are, of course, set alternatives to the Christmas pudding. For years I made a sherry trifle every Christmas Eve, rendering it fancier as I became more of a cook. 

Eventually, the bought trifle sponges were replaced with my own sponge fingers and home-made custard became de rigueur. The ne plus ultra was one made with pistachio sponge, poached figs, port and a cream flavoured with rose water and cardamom.

I also love a Christmassy bread-and-butter pudding, one made with panettone, dried fruit – including cranberries – soaked in Marsala and tiny chunks of apple. Boozy jellies look sparkling as long as they’re made with clear alcohol – Champagne, rosé wine, cider or tonic water with spirits. 

Those made with red wine are dark and moody and have a different appeal (a mulled wine jelly is Christmas in a glass, as long as you’re not heavy-handed with the spices).

You’re allowed to go old-fashioned – which is why there’s a chocolate and chestnut pavé – and decorate your puds in as over-the-top a fashion as you fancy. It’s Christmas.

These boozy need to be made a good 24 hours before you want to serve them as it will take that long for the jellies to set. I find a proper negroni too strong in jelly form so I add tonic water. It means the jellies are lighter, less bitter and slightly more herbal. Perfect to finish a large lunch.