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. (Right off the bat I want to let you know that I used Crisco shortening as the suet substitute, as suggested.) I have never made a traditional British pudding and I rather enjoyed it! It required steaming the ingredients in a pudding bowl which I have never done before.
I changed the recipe up a bit and added pumpkin, ginger, chocolate chips and the zest from one orange (inspired by Barbara’s post yesterday, and my own daughter’s recipe for pumpkin bread)
Traditional British Pudding
2 cups all purpose flour1/2 cup Crisco1/4 tsp ginger1/2 tsp. baking soda1 cup of milk3/4 cup of brown sugar1 cup canned pumpkinzest of 1 orange1 cup chocolate chips
Place flour into a large bowl and add the shortening, cutting together. Add all the other ingredients(except choc. chips) to the flour/shortening mixture and well with an electric mixer.
Grease a 2 quart bowl and add the mixture – making sure there’s room at the top for expansion. Cover the bowl with parchment paper making a slit in the top to allow for steam. I then added a sheet of aluminum foil on top of that with a matching slit in the top. Tie twine around the rim of the bowl to keep the foil on. (You can also add some additional twine around the whole bowl to make it easier to lift the hot pudding bowl out when it is done.) Put the pudding bowl in a deep(to enclose the entire bowl) heavy-bottomed pan and pour water about halfway up the sides of the bowl and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover the pan with a lid and keep the pudding at a simmer for 2 hrs.
Remove parchment and foil and let pudding sit for 5 min. Loosen pudding by running a knife down the edges. Put a serving platter over the top of the pudding bowl and invert the pudding onto it.
This pudding proved to be very moist and flavorful! The chocolate and orange flavors came through prominently, but the pumpkin, not so much:( I should have added more pumpkin and maybe no orange zest. It was not too sweet either, though I do not have an aversion to sweet treats! 🙂
Thanks Esther for the GREAT challenge!
I just had to add this last image…when I was a kid in elementary school( here in California), the British invasion was a big deal! It influenced what we wore (including make up by Yardley) and what we listened to…which for me, meant The Beatles! I remember piling into our station wagon with my dad and heading to the drive-in to see the just-released “A Hard Day’s Night.” I loved it! We imitated (tried to anyway) their accents and played “Beatles,” each playing air guitar and lip-syncing. Who needs “The Beatles Rock Band?” We were ahead of out time:)
BTW…Paul was my favorite.
