Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Malva Pudding
- Easy
- 70 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 1 egg; 150g sugar; 1 tbsp apricot jam, the secret signature
- 150g flour; 1 tsp baking soda; pinch salt
- 1 tbsp butter, melted; 1 tsp vinegar; 125ml milk
- Sauce: 200ml cream, 100g butter, 100g sugar, 60ml hot water, 1 tsp vanilla
- Custard or vanilla ice cream; in South Africa, usually both
The skills inside
Tempering a custardFolding: keeping the air in
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Beat egg, sugar and jam until pale and doubled: the jam is flavor and moisture insurance.
- Fold in flour, soda, salt alternately with the milk, butter and vinegar.
- Bake in a buttered dish, 180°C, 35–40 min to a deep brown sponge. 40 min
- Heat the sauce ingredients to melting; STAB the hot pudding all over and pour it ALL on: it looks like too much; it is exactly enough. Rest 15 min while it drinks. 15 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Folding: keeping the air in 34 recipes
- The air was actually built first and it shows: whatever was creamed or whipped has changed colour and grown in volume, pale and light rather than dense.
- The two mixtures were brought closer before being combined: a little of the light one worked into the heavy one first, so the rest is not beaten flat trying to move it.
- Folded and not stirred: a broad implement down through the middle, across the base, up and over, with the bowl turned between strokes.
- Stopped the moment the streaks disappear. It is still visibly aerated and holds its shape briefly when the spoon lifts away.
- Into the tin and into the oven straight away: a batter left standing on the bench gives back the air it was built for.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred until it looked perfectly smooth. Every stroke past the point where the streaks vanish knocks out air that cannot be put back, so the bake comes out dense and short of the tin, and often wet through the middle where there was no structure to hold it.
Tempering a custard 59 recipes
- The hot liquid went into the eggs a little at a time with constant whisking, and only then did everything go back to the pot.
- The heat under it stayed gentle throughout and it was never allowed to boil.
- Stirred continuously and right into the corners of the pan, where it thickens first and sets unnoticed.
- Judged by behaviour: it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- Taken off before it looks finished, and strained. Residual heat carries it the rest of the way, and a custard held on the heat until it looks right arrives past right.
Where it goes wrong The hot liquid went in too fast, or the pot went back over full heat to save time. The yolks set into threads before they could thicken smoothly, and a scrambled custard does not come back; straining hides a little of it and nothing hides the rest.
At the Table
- The Pour
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The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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