Daring Bakers' Challenge - April 2010: Traditional 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.

In UK, pudding means dessert. But for this challenge pudding meant a dish/dessert either steamed or boiled. I think Esther chose this challenge to introduce another technique of making cakes as well as introduce an ingredient that is not known by many (suet). Suet is the fat found around the kidney area of a cow or sheep. Suet may be bought fresh from the butchers or for countries like UK and Australia, in groceries. I tried my luck with the butchers, although things just got lost in translation. So for this challenge, I just have to go for the alternative - butter:p

There's basically 2 main types of puddings: crust pudding with filling and sponge pudding. Crust puddings are basically like pies and sponge puddings are like butter cakes. Some classic puddings are Christmas pudding, sticky toffee pudding, Sussex pond pudding and spotted dick.

So for this month's challenge I made a sponge pudding.

The whole process of steaming a cake is all new to me. So I was really excited at the same time anxious with what's going to happen. Traditionally, you would use a pudding bowl or pudding cloth for the pudding, but since I don't have that, I just made use of a normal bowl.

For my first attempt, I made a chocolate pudding with chocolate chips on top.

Puddings are usually served with custard. So I served my chocolate pudding with home-made hazelnut custard. It was definitely a treat! The cake or should I say pudding, was really really moist. The marriage of chocolate and hazelnut was perfect. H and I ended up eating the whole pudding in one sitting! It was indeed a sinful bliss of a dessert.

I was really delighted with the experience of making a pudding that when H asked if we could have friends over for dinner I quickly agreed! I thought, "That's an excuse for me to make another pudding!"

So I made an orange pudding. I just took an orange pound cake recipe, but instead of baking I steamed it. I served it with vanilla custard this time, and it was absolutely gorgeous! The warm kiss of the orange pudding drizzled with a cool creamy custard - miam miam as the French would say. No picture of the pudding with the custard though because I didn't want to keep my guests waiting. ;)

I really had a blast with my first DB challenge; can't wait for next month's!

Components used for this dessert treats:

• Chocolate Steamed Pudding
• Hazelnut Custard
• Orange Steamed Pudding

Bisou bisou,

Charlotte