April 27th, 2010

British Pudding

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 was reminded again tonight while I hastily put together my daring baker’s challenge the night before it was due that I should not, I repeat should not rush through a recipe when I am cooking or baking.

Typically my mistakes revolve around either not reading the directions and just putting stuff together, changing a protein in the recipe but not the stock or my newest one using seasoned bread crumbs instead of plain in what is suppose to be a sweet dish.

You can imagine my frustration as I am pouring the bread crumbs into the mixure and I realize that they are in fact seasoned not plain and now my dessert is going to taste funny.  So I did what any normal person would do when they realize they messed up the recipe and don’t have time to start over, you just start adding random things hoping it will turn out.

The following things were added in an attempt to mask the almost italian flavour I was left with: vanilla extract, almond extract and honey.  The addition of these things resulted in an almost strange combination of italian and sweet, but not necessarily in a good way.  I also added coconut and white chocolate chips which were the original plan prior to the breadcrumb fiasco.

While they were steaming, since apparently a proper british pudding is steamed for 2-3 hours, I made some chocolate sauce since really anything with chocolate sauce can’t be that bad.  I just have to say they looked much better than they taste.

I look forward to trying this recipe again but with the correct breadcrumbs because I can see how this dish would be really good.

British Pudding

4 ounces flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/5 teaspoons baking powder

4 ounces breadcrumbs (not seasoned)

3 ounces sugar

3 ounces crisco

1 large egg

6-8 tablespoons milk

white chocolate chips

coconut

Sift flour, salt and baking powder into bowl.  Add breadcrumbs, sugar and crisco.  Mix to a soft batter with beaten egg and milk.  Spoon into a buttered dish or ramekins and cover securely with foil.  Steam steadily for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.  Turn onto a plate and drizzle with a sauce.

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7 Responses to “Daring Bakers April Challenge”

  1. Renata says:

    Well, for a fiasco (as you say), it looks pretty good!

  2. Shelley says:

    That is so frustrating, and so something that I would do!! That recipe looks fantastic, though, and from the picture, I wouldn’t guess about the seasoned bread crumbs. I definitely say give it another shot, because it looks delicious! :)

  3. Ruth H. says:

    Well, the seasoned breadcrumbs don’t show in the picture, which looks amazing and decadent! Can you say you were going for that whole salty/sweet thing? Oh well… I hope that you do try this again, because it looks worth the effort!!

  4. Megan says:

    This definitely sounds interesting. Reminds me of the time we might have put too much salt in a recipe instead of sugar:). At least you have pregnancy as an excuse.

  5. Sorry that it didn’t work so well (yes seasoned crumbs wouldn’t be good with this recipe). But the final results does look right so you know how to steam a pudding at least, nice photo. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

  6. sandie says:

    too funny! I hope you had a good laugh over this! It’s the attempt that you should be proud of

  7. Kim says:

    Well that is too bad that it didn’t taste very good because it looks amazing! Chocolate, white chocolate, coconut . . . that sounds like those would be great toppings. I’ve done that kind of thing before too. Mine was adding salt instead of sugar to a cobbler crust, yuck! At least you completed the challenge, right? :)