Pudding, interrupted

Some weeks ago I added the last fruits to my rumpot. Last night, I decided it was about time I had a taste of it. The thing was, what to eat it with? Ice cream was the most obvious choice, but I wanted something more suitable for winter. Finally I decided that a steamed pud of some kind would work ok. I had a look at the various puddings I still have to make and decided on apple pudding (p213).


Apple pudding is a variation on the standard steamed sponge pud; it's just got a bit of stewed apple in it. Well, I'd be needing some stewed apple then, wouldn't I? I peeled and chopped an apple and put it on to stew while I whipped up the rest of the pudding batter.

I creamed butter and sugar, beat in an egg and stirred through some apricot jam. After that I folded in the dry ingredients. By the time I was ready to add the baking soda dissolved in milk, the apple was ready to go, so I bunged that in as well.


I spooned the batter into a greased pudding bowl, tied on the pleated tinfoil, and put it on to steam. The added apple had made it bit more gooey than usual, so I set the timer for a bit longer than the recipe stated.

About 35 minutes later, I checked the pudding. The irritating thing about steaming a pud is that you can't check on it without making a total mess of the carefully tied-on tinfoil top. And no, it wasn't anything like cooked through. I put on a new sheet of tinfoil and set the pudding to steam a bit more.


Naturally, my power cut out at this point. Brief power outages are not uncommon in post-quake Christchurch, and the busy power company people usually have it set to rights in fairly short order. Still, that didn't help my pudding much. I left it where it was and went to read a book by torchlight until the power came back on.

It was over an hour later that power was restored. I allowed some time for the water under my pudding basin to heat again, and longer still for the pudding to finish steaming. Finally, around 9pm, I checked the pudding and it was firm on top.


I scooped myself a generous chunk of pudding, then opened up my rumpot and spooned a selection of rum-soaked fruit on top. I tried to get some of every fruit that I'd put in there; the result being that I actually gave myself quite a large helping.

The pudding was good: still a little undercooked but moist, sweet and filling. But what can I tell you about the rumpot fruit? Well.. they taste like what they are: pieces of fruit soaked in rum. Eating them with the pudding toned down their potency a bit, but after the first few mouthfuls, I couldn't taste anything but rum. Lucky I like rum, then, isn't it?