Easy Steamed Pudding

There are two things one needs to make steamed pudding - pudding basin, and pot large enough to boil it in.  (Three, if you count the TIME you need to steam the pudding.)

Devotees of steamed puddings might regard this as heresy, but I cut the process short by having a pudding basin which gets heat to the centre of the pudding straight away ...

and a pressure cooker....

...the combined effect of which is to cut steaming time to less than half the recipe time.

Whatever your choice of equipment, here is the easiest steamed pudding recipe I know.  This came from Mum and was possibly the ONLY steamed pudding recipe she used.  You can very easily make you own variations on it.  You make it in the basin you intend to steam the pudding in, and it doesn't seem to be a problem that the basin wasn't greased (because you were using it as a mixing bowl).

Hints on the recipe below:
- for tablespoon read "one of those large spoons that often accompany a cutlery set and are used for serving". 
- Heaped in this case means as much flour as you can get on the spoon. 
- Use any jam you like.  Mum always used raspberry.  Below I used Oregon Grape jam.  It is very black stuff and the uncooked pudding mix becomes a particularly unappetizing shade of grey - which is why there are no pictures of the uncooked pudding mix. (Photo of cooked pudding to follow.)

Easy Steamed Pudding.

Melt together 1 tablespoon each of butter, sugar, and jam
Add 3 heaped TB flour,

1/2 tsp soda dissolved in 1/2 cup milk, and
a handful of dried fruit

Cover and steam 1 and half hours (or 40 minutes in a pressure cooker)

Easy Christmas Cake

I have already posted this recipe along with a slightly more complicated one near the start of this blog.

I made my Christmas cake a bit late this year a couple of weeks ago so I went for the easy recipe. 

Now we are 'feeding' it - a shot glass of brandy every couple of weeks.  It doesn't need it. and never got this treatment when my Mum made it, but then we don't have any youngsters around our Christmas table.
 Easy Christmas Cake


Put 3 lb mixed dried fruit in a pot with

8 oz brown sugar,
8 oz butter,
1 Tb glycerine and
1 cup water.
Boil 10 minutes and leave to cool.

Separate 4 eggs and beat the white and yolk separately. Add the beaten egg components time about with

1 lb flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
2 tsp pMixed Spice

Bake in a lined 9" deep tin in a slow oven (about 130C) for 3.5 hours

 

Post on icing it coming soon.

Cold Tea Fruit Punch

Wrong time of year I know but you might want a no-alcohol punch recipe for the Xmas party.  I needed one for a very large birthday party a couple of years ago and after hours of careful research found and adapted up with this 'cold tea' punch.  The recipe (like so many I adapt) was lost immediately after but I work on the assumption that it shouldn't be beyond the wit of  man  this woman to do again what she has managed to do once already.

Fortunately for those who commented that they had enjoyed that particular combination of flavours, I did eventually find the advertising postcard on which I had written the shopping list for ingredients. So here goes:

Cold Tea Fruit Punch

2.5 litres cold tea & 450 grams sugar  (I added a mint tea teabag to the brew)
2.5 litres grapefruit juice
1 litre pineapple juice
1 litre orange juice
4.5 litres ginger ale
Juice of 12 lemons

Add fruit, mint leaves, ice etc ..... serve in a very large bowl.

In imperial measurements it is something like 1/2 gallon of tea, 1 lb sugar, 1/2 gallon of grapefruit juice, 1/4 gallon each of pineapple and orange juice, 1 gallon of ginger ale and juice of 12 lemons.

No. 50 - Hummingbird Cake

Hummingbird cake was a dessert standard in a place I where worked over 20 years ago.  I looked up Hummingbird Cake on the internet recently and discovered there is loads of variety in the combinations of fruit used, and speculation about the name.  I suspect the name is some sort of nod to the range of tropical fruit that appears in these recipes ...that people (rightly or wrongly) associate hummingbirds and tropics.

This one uses mashed banana and crushed pineapple in the cake mix and sliced kiwifruit with the cream cheese filling between the layers.

Hummingbird Cake

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
3 beaten eggs
1.5 cups oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 x 250 gram tin of crushed pineapple & juice
2 cups mashed banana (about 6 average bananas)

Mix the dry ingredients, beat the eggs and oil together and add them to the dry stuff, add the vanilla and fruit.  Do not beat this mixture, blend is gently by hand until just mixed.

Divide the mix between 3 greased and papered 9" (23cm) round baking tins, and bake 20-25 minutes at 170-180 degrees C.  Cool a few minutes in the tins before turning these out on to racks to cool completely.

Icing and Filling

100 grams soft butter, 200 grams cream cheese, about 12 heaped tablespoons of fine icing sugar - beat all together well, spread 1/3 on each cake, put fine slices of peeled kiwifruit (or mango, or even tinned peaches if you like) on each and then stack them up.

Voila - hummingbird cake.   You might need a fork to eat this cake - it's not one to eat with one hand, wielding your coffee cup in the other, while contemplating the latest office emails.

Plum Sauce

The garlic sauce is good but this is my all time favourite homemade sauce.  In fact this is my all time favourite sauce - sausages, fritters, barbeque, baked potatoes, cheese toasties...

Plum Sauce

3 kg plums (small tart, dark red ones scrumped from trees that hang out of hedgerows are best)
2 large onions
1.5 kg sugar
6 cups malt vinegar
3 cloves garlic
2 Tb salt
1 tsp cayenne
2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground black pepper

Count the plums so that you know how many stones to extract from the stewed plums before you add the rest of the ingredients.  Either that or laboriously cut all the plums and remove the stones before you start. 

Add all the other ingredients and cook gently for about an hour.  I then whizz it up with the blender to make a nice smooth sauce.  Make sure it is close to boiling when you pour it into hot clean bottles and seal them up.

Let it mature for a couple of months before you use it.  It improves with age (the vinegar and spices mellow together and the flavour goes from raw to rich) so don't be afraid to leave it 6 months before you start to use it.

Recipe Book

This is the recipe book of the 10 year old me.  It has not been retired from service, and over 50% of the baking recipes in it are in my 10 year old handwriting.

 

It is a ring-binder covered in the sort of brown paper my mother used to use to line the Christmas Cake tin - sturdy, very sturdy - and decorated with pictures cut out of birthday cards. 

Mostly they seem to have been from my maternal Grandmother gave me - two pictures top right are actually from recycled vintage ones she had been given for birthdays as a child.  Perhaps I should have taken better care of them, but they have never been off display in that last 40 years or so.  You can possibly tell my maternal grandmother loved roses.  In fact she was well known locally for her roses and had won a trophy rose bowl in a local competition so many times they eventually awarded it to her to keep.

Strangely, despite the internet being a wonderful resource, I still work from recipes scrawled on paper.  I find it so much easier than refering to a computer screen set up in the next room - and quicker too for getting to that favourite recipe.   In recent years I have inserted some of the more worn pages into plastic slip covers

No. 49 - Steamed Loaf Take 2 - Fruit Tea Loaf

Now I have produced a firm (very firm) dense loaf which cuts easily and tidily into slices and can be buttered without falling to pieces and sticking to the butter-loaded knife.

Much better – possibly even too far the other way.    The recipe calls for self-raising flour and the only SR flour I had was wholemeal.  Too much bran.  On review I think that I would recommend 50/50 plain/wholemeal SR flour.

This amount made my three little tins and a 1 lb loaf tin which I baked in a tray of water in the oven.

 

Fruit Tea Loaf

500 g mixed fruit

1.5 cups of strong tea (use more if you are going for the full bran experience of wholemeal flour)
250 g caster sugar

Soak all this together for a few hours (preferably overnight)

1 egg

500 g self-raising flour  (or half/half wholemeal/plain self raising flour)
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp grated nutmeg

Stir the egg into the soaked fruit and sift in the dry ingredients.  Mix well and spoon it into your prepared baking (or steaming) tins.  Steam for 1 hour.

You will need a 2lb loaf tin if you are baking it (1 hour at 170 degrees C – fan oven).  I suggest that you stand the loaf tin in a roasting dish with an inch of so of water in it.

Steamed Loaf Take 1 - Date and Walnut

Comments: Fabulous result but not the one I wanted.  This recipe steamed into a soft, loose, moist, delicious ‘cake’.  Loaf it was not.  It was unslice-able (is that a concept?) and un-butter-able.  Crumbly implies dry, so I hesitate to use crumbly, but it fell to apart too easily to spread butter on the portions.

It would, however, make a fabulous steamed sponge pudding, which has given me an idea to continue this blog (after I reach the 50^th morning tea at work) with a dozen easy steamed puddings – especially as we will be heading into winter.  After that….. well who knows.

Date & Walnut Cake

6 oz chopped dates – soaked for a 2 hours in a cup (250ml) of hot strong tea.

1 tsp B Soda
dash of vanilla
6 oz soft brown sugar
2 oz butter
50 ml oil
1 egg
6 oz self-raising flour
3 oz walnut pieces

Once the dates have soaked and cooled, add the soda, vanilla, oil, and melted butter.

Sift the flour and sugar, add the nuts followed by the beaten egg and the wet date mixture.

You will need a deep tin (or tins) with a lid or a cover of aluminium foil and string, or a pudding bowl.  Grease it really well, fill it half way (to allow for rising) and cover it well.

Steam it for an hour in a deep, covered pot, with a trivet (metal biscuit cutter) or folded tea-towel under the bottom of the tin.  Make sure the water comes about 1/3 way up the tin.  Check the water level and top up if it looks like simmering dry.

I use a 10 litre hi-top pressure cooker for steaming.

Bake in Oven option:  Bake in a loaf tin for 45 mins to an hour at 180 degrees C  (170 degrees C in a fan oven).

Cool it in the tin – or serve immediately with custard if you are treating it as pudding.

Baking Powder Tins

That's a dessertspoon by the way

These are old baking powder tins. They're from the days when such containers were metal (not plastic) and the lids went over the top - not  inside it.  My grandmothers and my mother used to save them to steam a species of fruit loaf.

I’m not sure whether it was the dense loaf itself, the butter, or the novelty of it being round,  but I remember the childish me loving the buttered round slices of loaf with cups of hot tea. 

The tins came to light the other day while I was dredging around for preserving jars (for beetroot) and I mused over them for a while and recalled all the experimenting I did while living on yachts to try and make bread and cakes in a pressure cooker.  I must have been trying to reinvent the wheel because I had clearly forgotten that my pioneering forbears had ‘made do’ without bakers ovens for years and had been sufficiently inventive to create perfectly acceptable cakes and bread using steam.

I don’t have the specific recipe for the loaf that my memory conjures now that I look at the tins (if indeed there was only one), so I am going to experiment with oven bake tea loaf recipes that I do have.  I recall that such loaf recipes were rather plain affairs, very little leavening (soda), no egg, dry, hard, fruit soaked overnight in cold tea, and just a pinch of precious spices – and they came out dense and moist, a bit like slicing cheddar cheese….

Did dried fruit used to be drier?  I recall that dates used to come in blocks like building bricks, and sultanas were hard little nuggets.  Maybe that was just the effect of the extra distance travelled to NZ.  Anyway, soaking fruit used to be essential, but I am worried that soaking the softer, oiled, dry(ish) fruit  that we get nowadays might be overdoing it.

Watch this space…..

Pickled Beetroot - overflow method

My allotment is finally producing such quantities of veg that I can start preserving, pickling, making chutneys and jams, and filling the freezer.  I am also drying peas and beans for winter soups and stews.

My family call this 'bottled beetroot.'  It is relatively straight forward if you have the preserving jars to do it.  

Boil up some scrubbed beetroot.  While it is cooking, put your clean preserving jars on a tray in the oven and heat them up to 100 degrees C and keep them hot.

Prepare pickling brine in the ratio 1 cup malt vinegar, 1 cup sugar, and 2 cups water.  Combine, and bring this to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.  Reduce heat to a slow simmer.  (That is a 500ml jar in the picture.  This quantity of brine fills approx 5-6 of these jars when they are packed with sliced beetroot.)

Separate the seals and put them in a bowl so that you can cover them with boiling water just before you start the actual bottling process. 

Make sure the screw bands (that hold the dome seals on until the jars cool and are sealed) are clean and wiped with a skim of vaseline on the inside.

Once the beetroot is tender put on a pair of heavy washing up gloves, lift each beet out of the hot water with a slotted spoon, squeeze them gently to wipe the skin off, slice them up and pack the slices into a jar.  I do this one jar at a time to keep everything as hot as possible to ensure they seal.

Pour hot brine over the beetroot to completely (completely) fill the jar, put a seal on top and make sure it is properly bedded with nothing between the jar the the rubber edge of the seal, and then tighten down the screw band.  Set it on a board to cool and get on with the next jar. 

Any that don't seal will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks (as will the contents of any jar you open to use later).

If you don't have preserving jars, you might be able to use any decent sized jar which had a lid with one of those pop up centres to show they are sealed.  If you do, make sure the inside of the lid is coated so that it is resistant to the effects of vinegar.

Sorry but beetroot is messy and there is no possible way I can photograph the steps in this process without a second pair of hands - messy but worth it.  My favorite pickled vegetable.