Sussex Pond Pudding (GGBO Technical 8)

 

I'm pretty sure the general American reaction to this technical bake reveal was "what?" Suet pastry? An ENTIRE lemon inside? Seeds and skin and all? And then steamed? What even is this. We watched the episode at my parents', and I was trying to figure out how I would even cook these. I don't own a steamer, after all. Could I finagle something out of things I already have? But then when we drove home a package arrived with a brand new steamer and the words "On your marks, get set, bake!" (thank you, Dad!) so it was decided. I would try these weird little puddings and hopefully succeed at them, unlike the contestants on the show. 

Prue's recipe online was not exactly the same as on the show. It called for vegetable suet, aka crisco, and only required one half of a lemon per pudding. I don't know if this made it any easier, but I just followed along with what the online recipe said. After all, I already planned to substitute in crisco since I have no idea where I would find true suet!

The pastry dough was surprisingly soft and easy to work with. It didn't want to rip at all! I divided the dough in half and then broke off about a quarter of each half to use as the cover of the pudding, and rolled out the remaining 3/4s to line the pastry dishes.

I was so close to forgetting to grease and line my baking dishes, but by some miracle I remembered at the last second. My little dishes are smaller than what the recipe calls for, so I did have a lot of extra pastry. 

Next up was the filling, which is literally just brown sugar and butter. How can you go wrong with that? I'm honestly not sure if I was supposed to leave the butter in little chunks like that or not. The recipe says "mix" not "cream" so I didn't beat it too far. It seems like it wouldn't make much difference either way, but I don't honestly know. Then I put some filling in each pastry dish.

Then I had to cut each lemon half concertina-like, which was actually fairly difficult since my knife was apparently not particularly sharp. This is what mine ended up looking like:

Then one half goes in each pastry.

Top off with the remaining filling:

Then roll out the lids, top them, press the edges, and make it look pretty.

Then I had to do the weird folded foil covers. I couldn't find our string until after I already finished these, of course, so I just did my best with foil alone and made foil handles to lift them out when they're done. 

Then, into the steamer they went for a whopping two hours. I had to watch the pot so that the water wouldn't all evaporate, and added water a couple times, but mostly it was a waiting game. 

Shortly before the two hours were up I went to work on the creme Anglaise. I'm getting pretty accomplished at all these different cremes, let me tell you.

Finally, two hours were up and the puddings came out. It was the moment of truth: would they be cooked?

Yay! They were! They even both came out of the dishes fully intact! A win!

Despite our skepticism of these little puddings, they were actually very tasty! They were very rich, so I only really needed about half of one for myself, but they were very tasty and sweet and the creme balanced them very well. I had to google to make sure, but no, you don't eat the lemon skins and seeds, you just eat around them. The lemon juice soaks out into the cinnamon and sugar and adds a nice depth of flavor. Even the kids really liked them.

And really, look at that oozy goodness. How could that not be tasty? Overall, I am not sure whether they were "technically" good (I doubt they were supposed to have such sunken tops, for one thing), but they tasted good and I think I did better than any of the contestants, so that's a win for me! I think I may even try them again sometime!