Recipe #2 - Ginger Pudding

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Recipe #2 Ginger Pudding

When I first read this recipe I was really excited thinking that the end product would be a homemade version of instant Jell-O pudding, which I think is where most Canadians’ minds go when one brings up pudding. It had clearly slipped my mind that my grandmother was British and that not only do most Brits call all desserts pudding they tend to call a moist cake that we seldom see on this side of the pond pudding as well. The pudding that this recipe is referring to is similar to Christmas pudding, which I remember my Grandma making and my experiencing a similar disillusionment when I realized that we not about to eat a special chocolate Christmas pudding but rather a weird cake with fruit in it (you think I would have learned from this). It appears that Canadians seem to have forgotten the steamed pudding, as in looking for additional instructions the majority of the recipes I found were from Britain, Australia and South Africa.

Here’s my Grandma’s recipe

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Ginger Pudding

½ cup butter

2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

½ cup molasses

1 cup raisins

1 ½ cups flour

2 tsp. ginger

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup milk

Mix, put in coffee tins, steam greased 1 hour.

So from these instructions I was really unsure of where to start so I started googling steamed ginger pudding like crazy.

By the way, you are also going to need two cereals bowls, tin foil, parchment paper, 2 elastics, string and two large pots.

1. I decided to go with her ingredients minus the raisins because I am not a fan and I doubled the ginger and used fresh because I really like ginger.

2. Every recipe I found referred to a "pudding basin", in all of the photos it just looked like a cereal bowl so that is what I used and it worked quite well.  The recipe made so much that I had enough for two full bowls. I greased the bowls first with butter and then poured the mixture in, I left a few inches at the top which worked out well as the puddings rose quite a bit as they were steamed.

3. Then came sealing the pudding which was the complicated part, I read a lot about this but only grasped the concept when I watched the video below. I took a piece of parchment paper about twice the size of the top of my bowl and greased one side of it and then put a piece of tin foil on the ungreased side. I then folded a pleat in the tinfoil/parchment combo down the middle so there was a vent as the pudding expanded. 

I covered the top of the bowl with the parchment and foil with the foil side up. The video below used string to seal it but I found that an elastic band worked a lot better; I then tucked the remaining edges of foil under the elastic band so it was completely sealed. I then used string to create a handle so that I could get the bowl out of the boiling water. If you still have no idea what I’m talking about check out this helpful link: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/videos/1060/steaming-a-pudding

4. I then placed the sealed bowls in a larger pot on the stove filled with water up to about two thirds of the way up the pudding bowl. I brought the pots of water to a boil and then turned them down to low. Most recipes said it should take around 1 and half hours, but mine took at least two hours. Avoid the temptation to peak at your pudding; they work a lot better if they stay sealed.

5. The result was an incredibly delicious moist cake; I recommend you eat it right away, as the pudding does not taste the same the next day.

Prep time – Active – 15 minutes Inactive- 2 hours

Cost – Pretty cheap under $10 (I already had all the ingredients in my pantry).