Daring Bakers’ English Pudding Challenge (April 2010)

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

I bought my first pudding basin last christmas because I had been charged with the task of making the Christmas Pudding. Now, I absolutely loathe the traditional fruit pudding so I figured that I would make it the only way I KNEW I would like it. With chocolate. Not traditional but very tasty!

I was very excited when I saw that my very first challenge with the Daring Bakers would allow me to use my pudding basin again. Ive never used suet, ive never steamed a dessert, in fact, im not really sure ive ever steamed anything. All ingredients and cooking methods I was new to. Bring it on!

I decided to make the Sussex Pond Pudding as I love lemons and the lemons are looking particularly lovely this season. The idea of steaming a pudding with a whole fruit inside it was also intriguing. I began by sourcing suet mix, which I found at my local supermarket in a box in the baking aisle.

I made the suet pastry according to the instructions on the box. very easy and straight forward.

Lined my pudding basin. (Yes I used kitchen scissors to trim the pastry!)

Added the cubed butter and demerera sugar

Look! A lemon!

Hid the lemon below lots more butter and sugar (possibly a little more than required by the recipe, but since when has extra butter and sugar been anything but good?)

Pop the lid on!

This part I thought would be very difficult, but it turned out pleating the foil and tying it with string was quite easy. My basin didn’t have a lip on it but the string never failed.

I made an impromptu trivet out of scrunched up aluminium foil and plunged by pudding into the boiling water!

My pud! After 3 and a half hours of steaming. To be honest, I would probably steam it for another couple of hour as its not as golden as I would like.

Another pud! Actually its the same one but de-basined. MMMmmmm….

You can see the lemon in the middle there! Oozing lemony sugary sauce….

Overall, it turned out ok. Some of the pudding was absolutely amazing. The pastry was flaky and tasty with some beautiful lemony sweet sauce. The only problem was that parts of the lemon turned out quite bitter and that tended to overpower the sweetness of the dish. I think that could be overcome by steaming the pud for a few more hours.

While I havent been able to post any more of my pudding attempts, this challenge has certainly inspired me to get creative in the kitchen. Expect more puds, savoury and sweet, large and small over the coming weeks! This was a great challenge that introduced me to many things i’d never think of trying on my own. Thanks Esther, for a truly inspiring challenge!!

So my lovelies, what puddings have you tried to make? Did they work? I think my next attempt is going to be this Very Chocolate Pudding. Just for something different…

Sussex Pond Pudding Recipe – As seen at The Daring Kitchen

Ingredients

1 box suet mix

120g Demerera Sugar

120g Unsalted Butter

1 Large Lemon (try to get unwaxed and thin skinned lemons)

Method

1. Make the pastry according to the instructions on the box

2. Grease your pudding basin with butter and line it with the pastry

3. Cut the butter into small cubes and place half in the basin and cover with half the sugar

4. Wash and dry your lemon, and place it on top of the butter and sugar

5. Cover with the rest of the butter and sugar

6. Cut a disc out of the remaining pastry and cover the pudding filling, folding around the edges of the pastry in order to seal it well

7. Steam for 3.5 hours (I would probably try steaming it for another couple of hours next time)

MAKE SURE YOUR POT DOES NOT BOIL DRY!

8. When you invert your pudding basin to get your pudding out, make sure you do it in a rimmed dish as the sauce may leak out

9. Enjoy!