S1E4 Signature: Pudding

We have now crossed the half-way point for this season with only eight challenges remaining! 

This week is all about puddings, which are definitely not my speciality (yet?). 

You're probably wondering what constitutes a pudding, considering that the word "pudding" is essentially synonymous with "dessert" in the UK. In this case, "pudding" is referring to a specific type of dessert that was historically boiled or steamed. For example, you may have heard of "sticky toffee pudding", "jam roly-poly" or "spotted dick", all of which are traditionally steamed. Many of these puddings are baked nowadays, making them easier and faster to cook.

The instruction for the signature pudding this week was that it needed to be steamed or baked in the oven. At first, I heard this as <steamed> or <baked in the oven>, but then I thought about it again and thought it might mean that it had to be <steamed or baked> in the oven. Sue said, "this is not the Great British Boil Off or Steam Off", so I played it safe and decided that if I were going to steam it, it would have to be in the oven.

The pudding that I chose to make is my mum's cranberry pudding that we have after Christmas dinner every year. The cranberry pudding is steamed and served with a Grand Marnier sauce. The only issue is that it usually takes between 6 and 10 hours to steam it. We usually steam it in a pot on the stove, not in the oven, so my theory is that the constant heat from the oven might allow it to cook faster, and it might actually be possible to cook it within the time limit.

I also would normally double the recipe to feed a larger crowd, but for these purposes, I decided to leave the recipe as-is. Making a normal-sized pudding also meant that I needed something to cook it in, so Evie bought me a brand new pudding basin! I love it so much.

I have two and a half hours for this bake.

Time starts ...now!

I started by chopping my cranberries. I would normally use fresh cranberries, but they are only in season from October to December, so I had to settle for frozen. I allowed them to thaw overnight and they became very soft and juicy. I quartered them and tossed them in one-third of the recipe's sugar.

I set them aside and zested my orange. I measured out my margarine and sugar and then lined my pudding basin with tin-foil strips. 

I didn't prepare very much for this bake, so I was winging it a bit with the order of things...

When I lived in England, I had to do all my baking without a standing mixer, and now that I have access to a standing mixer again, I rarely use it. I think this is mostly because I like having complete control over the feel of the batter/dough, and I lose that control when I'm using the mixer. One exception is that I always use the mixer for whisking egg whites. I would never get anything else done if I whisked all my egg whites by hand. Also, buttercream.

I creamed my margarine and sugar together by hand, which was not as much fun as it should have been as I had forgotten to soften my margarine. It's a good thing I'm fresh off of bread week so my arm muscles are ready for this.

I added the orange zest and the eggs one at a time and then carefully mixed in the dry ingredients, trying not to overwork the mixture. 

Once I had a smooth batter, I added in two tablespoons of oat milk to thin it out a bit and then folded in my cranberries.

The cranberries were much juicier than they would be if they had been fresh, and they subsequently turned my batter a nice shade of pink. I transferred the batter into the pudding basin and covered it with tin foil, folding the ends of the tin strips over top. I topped the whole basin with tin foil and parchment paper and then tied baker's twine around the outside to keep the lid in place. 

The basin then went into a deep baking tray, which I filled with freshly boiled water until the basin was half-submerged. And then it went into my pre-heated oven!

While that was baking, I decided to make some sugared cranberries for decoration. This might have been a very silly idea since I was basing the method on one video I watched a while ago. So, with a limited concept of what I was doing, I dissolved some sugar in some water and brought it to a rolling boil. Then I placed six cranberries (I only needed a few for decoration) into the syrup and let them roll around for a minute or so. I took them out and let them cool off on a plate, and then rolled then in caster sugar.

Next, I moved on to my Grand Marnier sauce. This sauce is very quick and easy to make. I put corn starch, brown sugar, water and salt into a pot, brought it to a boil and then added butter and Grand Marnier (orange liqueur) once it was thick. 

When I had finished my extra bits, I still had to wait about an hour for my pudding to come out of the oven. I spent that whole hour nervous that the pudding would either not bake at all, which would be awful, or that it would explode, which would also be awful but would at least give me a better story to tell. It also didn't help that about an hour into the bake, when I was anxiously sipping tea in the other room, my dad walked into the kitchen and said, "is the oven supposed to be smoking like that?"

Thankfully, he was joking.

After an hour and twenty minutes in the oven, I pulled the pudding out to check on it. I was shocked by how much it seemed to have risen. I pulled the lid off and poked a skewer inside, which came out wet so I re-covered it and put it back into the oven for ten minutes.

After the ten minutes were up, I decided that I needed to take it out to get it on a plate. I just prayed that it was cooked through! I had to cut a bit off of the top to level it out before putting it on the plate, as it had risen unevenly. I turned it out and peeled off the strips of tin foil.

Look at that! It turned out! 

I was so proud of myself at this moment. No one on the show steamed their pudding for this challenge, they all chose to bake theirs, probably because it's less anxiety-inducing. 

I still had about sixteen minutes left in my challenge, so I quickly poured my sauce into a serving dish, dusted the pudding with icing sugar, placed the sugared berries on top and made some spirals out of an orange rind. I could hear the anxious background music for this, it was the closest I had come so far to the end of the time limit.

Hands off your bakes!

Time: 2 hours, 25 minutes

So pretty! I'm super chuffed with this one. 

I was a little bit worried about the pudding being undercooked on the inside as I felt a bit rushed close to the end, but there's no way to know until we cut into it!

My fears were realized: the centre of the pudding was not cooked through. You can see in this last image that there is some raw batter right at the bottom. That being said, I only steamed it for one and a half hours. If I had managed my time better at the beginning, I could have had enough time to steam it for an extra half hour, which would have most likely been enough.

Nevertheless, it tasted amazing and was moist and fluffy. 

So close.

Recipe used:

TOP SECRET FAMILY RECIPE