Tag Archives: Cooking

Malva Pudding

 

This dessert is a little jewel. My brother-in-law Mike made it during our Thanksgiving festivities in Kentucky.

It’s kind of like a very moist cake. Picture a Tres Leches cake, but more thin and–dare I say–more delicious? I haven’t decided if I dare or dare not, since I love a good Tres Leches Cake.

This is a South African dessert. Mike happens to be from South Africa, and this recipe has been passed along through the generations. You are making a historical artifact, essentially, and engaging in a cookery lore that has been fine-tuned to hit your taste buds just so.

I had the honor of holding the original, 200-year old recipe card in my own hands, and kissed it with my own lips.

Well, that was the interesting version, but the real version if that Mike hopped on the worldwide web and found this recipe on food.com. Heh heh.

But whether it came from the in’ernet or came from his South African grandmother’s sticky recipe box on a hand-written card with the marks of love, age, and flour all over it, it’s equally delicious.

If you’re dubious about the ‘moist’ part (as I was–I hate anything that remotely rings of sogginess), take your doubts and give them a swift kick in the groin. They have no place here. Here, only deliciousness reigns.

Ingredients

(Serves 6)

For the pudding

3/4 c sugar

2 eggs

1 TBS apricot jam

1 1/4 c flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 TBS butter (generous TBS)

1 tsp vinegar

1/3 c milk

For the sauce

3/4 heavy whipping cream

7 TBS butter

1/2 c sugar

1/3 c hot water

2 tsp vanilla

Let’s get started!

First, find two strapping young men to do the work.

And don’t come out until you have that pudding on a plate!

Then, go watch funny youtube videos with your sister . . . .

. . . and let the magic unfold in the kitchen ‘by itself’ so to speak.

Now get your oven preheating to 350.

Grease an oven dish (a 7×7 square Pyrex dish works, or a circular one like Mike used). Baking spray never hurt anyone if you don’t feel like getting down and dirty with the butter dish.

Beat together the sugar and the eggs until the mixture is thick and yellow.

Add the apricot jam, and mix it in.

Melt the butter, and add in both the butter and vinegar.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt; add it to the wet mixture along with the milk and give the whole thing a good beating.

If your mixer has a really deep bowl, be aggressive with your spatula. You don’t want flour hanging around the bottom of the bowl.

That’s what happened to Mike, and he was obliged to pour the batter back into the bowl from the baking pan and remix it.

I’m sorry I had to point that out, Mike, but you may have just saved our readers from making the same mistake! It’s called a ‘moral’ and I always have to include one in my ‘story.’

Pour the whole mixture into the greased oven pan.

Bake that baby until the pudding is golden brown and has risen (somehwere between 30-45 minutes).

Meanwhile, make the sauce: melt the butter and mix all the ingredients together. Very straightfoward.

As soon as the pudding comes out of the oven . . .

. . . pour the sauce over it as evenly as possible.

Let it stand for a few minutes before serving. This gives the cream time to invade every inch of this amazing dessert.

It really should be served warm, so gather everyone together. C’mon Dave and Erica! Let’s boogie!

Time to serve it up, whether Erica and Dave are willing to stop suggling or not.

Every bite caused my senses to celebrate this thing called ‘dessert.’

This South African treat is guaranteed to put a smile on everyone’s face.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Malva Pudding

PW Weekend: a lesson in cookie decorating

During the food fest that was two Saturdays ago at the Pioneer Woman’s Lodge, there was a beautiful cookie decorating demonstration by Bridget, a cookie maker and food blogger extraordinaire with the sweetest personality you ever saw.

And the most adorable red ringlets.

Cookies had been prebaked and brought in for us, and you can get the recipe for those fantastic Vanilla-Almond Sugar Cookies here. Loads of supplies were standing by, just waiting for us to get our grubby little hands on them.

Sprinkles, glittering colored sugar, edible gold dust . . .

Squeeze bottles for the icing, and little bottles of food coloring.

Women were starting to trickle in–local women, friends of Ree’s, friends of the Drummond family. This is Ree’s godmother!

An amazing woman.

I should probably also introduce you to the other guests. I’ve been so caught up in talking about Charlie the basset hound that I’ve barely talked about the wonderful, wonderful people! Sorry, ladies. There were 4 winners, and each of us brought someone with us. Molly brought her mother Susie:

Christy brought her (adorably pregnant) best friend Kathryn:

Jennifer brought her friend Ann . . .

. . . and finally, I brought my Mom.

I’m trying not to make apologies, but I have to be true to myself. Why is the color balance off in every single one of those pictures? What was I doing?? Was I on Photoshop drugs or something? In fact, did I even process these pictures myself, or did the Photoshop gnome villains hack into my system . . . again?

Definitely the Photoshop gnome villains. Those little squirts with their little red caps and hairy little toes.

Or we can just pretend I did it on purpose to give each picture individuality–a pink/red tone for Molly and Susie, a yellow tone for Christy and Kathryn, and a bluish hue for Jennifer and Ann. And my color balance problems don’t end here, but I’ll try to shut up about it. For the most part.

We enjoyed Ree’s coffee–big time.

As all the women gathered, Christy and I ran around snappity snapping with our cameras. We were still slightly freaking out.

Hi Christy! I’m sorry I made you so yellow earlier, and now so pink. Your skin is actually a beautiful, normal color.

I met the lovely Hyacinth, who I’ve been reading about for over a year.

Her haircut is seriously the cutest thing. “Hyacinth, will you tattoo your name and the name of your hair stylist on my left arm?” I asked.

“Um, you’re a very weird girl, but I’ll pose for a picture with you if you promise to stay at least 10 feet away from me the rest of the day,” she responded graciously.

I jumped at the chance.

We actually had a lovely conversation, and since she didn’t get a restraining order against me afterwards, I assume she thought it was lovely too.

Once we were all gathered, Bridget passed out recipes and instructions.

I studied them carefully in case there was a pop quiz at the end.

Ree was looking slightly impish.

Bridget demonstrated how to make Royal Icing–the stiff kind that you use to pipe your outlines on the cookie, and the ‘flooding’ kind that is a little more liquidy, and fills in the piped area with the color of your choice.

It was so delicious that I grabbed the mixer attachment and stuffed the whole thing in my mouth, to the horror of all the guests. Then Ree screamed “get this crazed woman out of my house!” and the icing and I fled across the open prairie in shame, where I hoped the wild mustangs would take me in as one of their own.

I kid! But you probably knew that already.

Ree would never send me from her house in a fit or rage. She’s just not the ‘fit of rage’ kinda lady. She’s the kind who would join me in licking every ounce of frosting off that mixer. The picture above is my proof.

The demonstration was so much fun.

All the ladies were so warm, so friendly, and so conversational.

Once the icing was mixed, it was time to start decorating 5 tons of cookies.

These all-important pictures show Bridget piping the outline with the royal icing that she will later fill in with flood icing.

Well this should be easy, I thought to myself. You kind of draw on a cookie, type of thing.

Hah! I couldn’t draw a straight line to save my own sorry hide.

Everyone suddenly got very, very focused.

Ree’s girls were so into it.

What if the PW sees my wonky lines of icing and rejects me forever? I thought. Maybe I should just destroy the evidence and slip this mangled cookie into my mouth.

But I didn’t. I proceeded as planned, and tried to erase the error of my ways with the glossy, gorgeous flood icing. Use a toothpick to get it to the edges–if it goes on its own, it’s too liquidy and the cookies will never dry. Let’s take a look at Bridget’s progress:

It’s so easy to make beautiful designs with the flood icing, simply by making swirls with a toothpick.

Unfortunately my little beauties got a little bashed up on the plane ride the next morning.

I’m not a baker by nature, but I could have decorated these cookies all day long.

My Mom’s cookies turned out beautifully.

She’s such an artist.

You can read Ree’s blog post about the experience here.

It was so much fun to see the Pioneer Woman in action, snapping the step by step photographs that you can click on over and see on her blog. Wild stuff, I’m telling you.

Simply wild. And her camera has a wicked fast shutter speed.

Christmas is approaching, and how much fun would it be to get together with a bunch of girls and have a massive cookie decorating party?

Lotsa fun, I’m telling you. Especially if you send me a little care package with the results . . . see, I’m an FDA-approved, um, cookie analyst.

And especially if two amazing chefs, Lia and Tiffany, come in and make you a killer salad for lunch. Here’s Lia, the toffee-making, truffle-creating Chef of wonders.

The toffee and truffles deserve their own post.

Here’s Tiffany, another lovely redhead. Seriously–Ree, Tiffany, Bridget–all redheads. All amazing cooks. I’m thinking something funky is going on here.

This was the best salad I’ve ever had. The components alone were already spectacular, especially the roasted fennel bulbs. I snuck a couple off the baking sheet.

Shrimp, scallops, fresh greens = I love everything and everyone in the world.

Add to that a glass of berry lemonade . . . oh yeah.

There’s more to come in this series. I make no promises on how fast they will appear since Christmas is practically at our door, but fudge, toffee, wild horses, and more kitty cats are in our future.

So don’t be goin’ anywhere!

That was figurative. You should totally get up to pee if you have to.