Since the recipe is for fig or prune pudding, I decided to go with prunes. I like prunes better than figs, and I also had an open bag of them in the cupboard, left over from last week's pork olives.
You start with creamed butter and sugar, beat in an egg, then stir through apricot jam, fold through the sifted dry ingredients, then add baking soda dissolved in milk, then stir through the prunes. That's the order you're supposed to do it in; I think all this adding and stirring is a bit unnecessary, and makes for overmixed batter. After the egg, I just added all the remaining ingredients at once and folded them through, which worked fine.
I spooned my mixture into a bowl, and covered with pleated tinfoil. The other option is baking paper, but since I still haven't replaced that crappy stuff I bought the other week, I went for tinfoil, which has the added bonus of staying in place while you tie it on. I lowered the bowl into simmering water, placed a lid on the pot and set the timer for 40 minutes.
You'll find the recipe gives a cooking time of 30 minutes; not one of my steamed puds have been even remotely cooked in that time. When I got this one out after 40 minutes, it looked cooked on the surface, but a quick finger-poke revealed a gooey centre. In the end I had to steam it for a full 60 minutes before it was cooked.
Prune pudding (with a bit of ice cream) is the ideal warm, filling dish for a cold, wet evening like yesterday. It has a nice spongy texture, with big chunks of prune and a few flecks of apricot from the jam. I could only manage a small helping, being full of the lasagne I made out of those leftover cream soups. But that just means there's more left over for tonight!
Baz wants to know what goodies from the Edmonds book you are going to make for the weekend?
ReplyDeleteHmmm... Has he been a good enough boy to deserve Edmonds goodies?
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