I'm Back and I'm Daring!

Hey! Remember me?

Sooo yeah, I suck at updating. I actually have about 5 unfinished posts on my dashboard thingie, so hopefully I'll get to them soon. Also, I found a way to ensure blogging at least twice a month- I became a Daring Cook/Baker. It's this monthly challenge I found out about from Jill Coste where you bake or cook a complex recipe. I figure it'll not only get me to blog at least twice a month, it'll also help me with this rut I've been in where I feel like I can't have fun cooking when I eat healthy. I love complex, tedious recipes. Wilted spinach and grilled chicken is not complex. Nor is it exciting. Don't worry, though, I'm not becoming a food blog. My thought is, by making a deal with myself to stick to the splurges in the challenge only, I can feel less like I'm punishing myself the rest of the month. Does that make sense to anyone else? Do you think it'll work? We'll see.

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet. WARNING: Crappy cell phone pictures ahead!

This challenge raised a couple questions for me. So here's what I learned:

1. What is a pudding?

Ok, this is a question I've always had. I remember reading about Treacle and Christmas Puddings and Jam Roly-Polys being devoured by the greedy antagonistic children in gothic novels. However, when I was in England, my diet mainly consisted of crumpets slathered with clotted cream and jam, Bangers and Mash, Shepard's Pie, and Cadbury Crunchies. I remember hearing jokes about something called "Spotted Dick" but never got up the courage to try it. After being given my challenge, I learned that a pudding is a dessert. It can be prepared two ways- either as something similar to cake or similar to pie- but there are a few differences:

• It is prepared in a bowl, rather than a pan or plate
• It is steamed rather than baked
• Instead of butter it requires suet- the fat found around the kidneys of a cow or sheep

That's right y'all. Organ fat. Which leads me to:

2. Why suet?

I'll admit I had some difficulty coming to terms with this aspect of the challenge. I love my butter. I had the option to use substitutes if necessary, but I wanted to be a good Daring Baker. I didn't want to wuss out on the first try. So I psyched myself up. I mean, I've eaten prairie oysters before, so this can't be that bad, can it? Then, after thinking about it for a while, it did kind of make sense in an historical aspect. Suet has a higher melting point and longer shelf life than butter. It's also completely flavorless and uses more of the animal.

So I went to the butcher who gave me some suet for free (!) and I set to making this challenge. We were given free range as to what kind of pudding to make, but the sticky caramel freak in me was drawn to Sticky Toffee Pudding. This challenge also gave me the opportunity to play with a recipe- I'm always a stickler for recipes, so this got me out of my shell, so to speak, and tweak. I used the basic recipe provided by Esther and adapted a sauce recipe from the gay boyfriend of my dreams, David Lebovitz.

The process of making the pudding was awesomely simple. It took about 15 minutes total to prep and, while it was steaming, I was able to de-pet hair all my furniture; do 3 loads of laundry; AND put together an Ikea bookshelf. The hardest part, actually, was converting the measurements. Math was never this English major's strong suit.

As for how it tasted? It was... good. I think if I had added some sort of spicy or salty aspect to the pudding it would have been fantastic. Somehow it just didn't have any flavor while tasting amazingly sweet. It had the texture of bread pudding. While I didn't have any issue or taste a trace of suet in the pudding, I think it could have benefitted with the flavor of butter, or something that wasn't obnoxiously sugary. Which is totally on me deciding to hack and adapt instead of following a recipe.

I had my boyfriend, J, be my impartial taster. He thought it was interesting, but kept freaking out that he was biting into animal fat. Baby.

Would I make it again? Sure. I might make it with butter to ease the minds of whoever else was eating it, and I might go with a more dynamic recipe, but I do like the texture that results from steaming and it's just so easy. So, without further ado:

Sticky Toffee Pudding
Adapted from Esther of The Lilac Kitchen
and David Lebovitz

Equipment required:
• 2 pint (1 litre) pudding bowl or steam-able containers to contain a similar amount they should be higher rather than wide and low (I used my smallest pyrex mixing bowl)
• Steamer or large pan, ideally with a steaming stand, upturned plate or crumpled up piece of kitchen foil (I overturned a cereal bowl in my stock pot)
• Mixing bowl
• Spoon
• Measuring cups or scales
• Foil or grease proof paper to cover the bowl
• String

Ingredients
For the sponge pudding
(100 grams/4 ounces) All-purpose flour
(1/4 teaspoon) salt
(1.5 teaspoons) Baking powder
(100 grams/4 ounces) breadcrumbs
(75 grams/3 ounces) Caster sugar
(75 grams/ 3 ounces) Shredded suet or suet substitute (i.e., Vegetable Suet, Crisco, Lard)
(1) large egg
(6 to 8 tablespoons) Cold milk
6 oz dates, chopped and steamed

For the sauce
2 cups (500ml) heavy cream
1/2 cup (120g) demerara or muscovado sugar (it's the same as sugar in the raw)
2 1/2 tablespoons golden syrup or molasses
pinch of salt

1. Make the toffee sauce by bringing the cream, demerara or turbinado sugar, golden syrup (or molasses) and salt to a boil in a medium saucepan, stirring often to melt the sugar.
2. Lower heat and simmer, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is thick and coats the spoon. Pour half the sauce into the prepared soufflé mold, and reserve the other half for serving.
3. Sift flour, salt and baking powder into a large bowl.
4. Add breadcrumbs, sugar and suet.
5. Mix to a soft batter with beaten egg and milk
6. Mix in the dates.
   
7. Turn into a buttered 1 litre/ 2pint pudding basin and cover securely with buttered greaseproof paper or aluminum foil. Tie string around the bowl, leaving a handle for lifting out of the pan.
   
8. Steam steadily for 3 to 4 hours
9. Turn out onto warm plate, Serve with the reamaining toffee sauce.