WANT TO SAVE THIS RECIPE?
Enter your email below and we’ll send it straight to your inbox. Plus you’ll get great new recipes from us every week!
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.
The two basic types of British puddings are a suet crust pudding with a filling or a suet sponge pudding. Examples of a pudding with a crust are a steak and kidney pudding or a Sussex pond pudding and examples of the sponge pudding are spotted dick, Christmas pudding and college pudding.
Well, I wasn’t very daring this month and you won’t find any suet in this post. In case you’re wondering, suet is the hard but flaky fat found on the inside of a cow or sheep around the kidneys and that area of the body. Did I hear you say Ewwwwwww. No, that was probably me. I told you, I wasn’t very daring this month.
Luckily we were allowed to use substitutes for the suet in our British puddings and even better, we were allowed to make a savory or a sweet version. If you’ve visited my blog much you’ll know that, of course, I picked the sweet version.
I picked a rich, fudgey, lick-your-plate-clean, Very Chocolate Pudding from the very British Pudding Club website made with butter. They recommended serving it with a sauce and I thought since there was so much chocolate going on that a Creme Anglaise sauce would be perfect and it was.
I added the strawberry just for the picture, but after I had a bite of strawberry and a bite of Chocolate Pudding with Creme Anglaise sauce all at the same time, I decided it was a fabulous combination and diced up some strawberries to serve with the pudding.
This pudding reminded me of molten lava cakes that are so popular now, only without a liquid chocolate center. It had a very soft almost gooey texture in the middle – perhaps I should have steamed it longer, but it set up more after it cooled and everyone loved it. Did I mention I licked my plate clean.
WANT TO SAVE THIS RECIPE?
Enter your email below and we will send it straight to your inbox. Plus you will get great new recipes from us every week!
Steamed British Chocolate Pudding
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter softened
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- ¼ cup cocoa
- 1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs beaten
- ⅓ cup chocolate chips
Instructions
- Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and cocoa together and add to the creamed mixture with the egg, a little at a time, beating well between each addition. Finally, stir in half the chocolate chips. Place the remaining chocolate chips in a greased 1.5 quart pudding bowl before adding the mixture. Steam for 1 ½ hours. Turn out and serve with, inevitably, Chocolate Sauce. Custard or Extra Thick are also wonderful with this pudding.
- I followed the recipe for Creme Anglaise on Cafe Lynnylu, except I substituted vanilla bean paste.
- Visit the Daring Kitchen Recipe Achieve for the recipes and (tips on steaming) and the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see the wide variety of British Puddings other Daring Bakers created. Thanks Esther for helping take me out of my comfort zone and learning to bake with steam.
Barbara Bakes
Anonymous – there are some great tips on steaming on the Daring Kitchen website.
Chow and Chatter
oh wow love this I need to try a steamed pudding and I am proud of you as a Brit
tspegar
Gorgeous! That looks incredible! I am bookmarking this to make my Dad for Father's Day… he'll just love it!
Michelle
OH my goodness! Does this look luscious or what!
Laura
Yummmm!! I am with you about the suet–I also went for the chocolate pudding. Love the idea of serving it with the creme anglaise and strawberries.
Denise@There's a Newf in My Soup!
Barbara – Your pudding does look gooey-licious. I was surprised when my butcher did have suet, so I decided to be daring and actually use it. It really surprised me how clean and lovely it looked after rendering and straining, and NO meat smell! With that said, I think butter would have worked fine for the sponge version. Beautiful job!
Anonymous
So, uh, exactly how do you cook/steam this?
Jill
That looks so good! I wish I had tried a chocolate version instead of sitting this month out.
innBrooklyn
looks delicious, and if it reminds you of molten chocolate cakes it must be super tasty too. love the serving w/ creme anglaise and strawberry!
Mamatkamal
wowww ! What a lovely combination: strawberries , chocolate and custard! Your pudding looks just perfect, THE BEST.
Cheers
teresa
i've never had anything like that, it looks fabulous!
sunita
Barbara, I'm drooling over your pudding; it's utterly chocolicious 🙂
Megan
that would be suet, not suit. 🙂
Megan
You are brilliant! This I would have made but the suit scared me away and I didn't do any investigating. Job very well done. I might have to try this someday! I love lava cakes!
Bonnie
I'm with you on the suet (the only thing I use it for is the bird feeder). Wow, that chocolate pudding cake looks so good.
Nachiketa
What a yummy looking pudding :)even i made chocolate 'Steamed Chocolate Pudding & Steamed Apple n Caramel Pudding for Daring Bakers April 2010 – My First Challenge'Cheers,The Variable, Crazy Over Desserts – NachiketaCatch me on facebook @ Crazy Over Desserts
Jeanne
Yum! Chocolate is always a good choice, especially with Creme Anglaise and strawberries!
The Betz Family
Mmmmmm, yummy chocolate! Great job on the challenge.
Stephanie @ Per l'Amore del Cibo
W-O-W. I opted not to use suet too, but I tried to stick with traditional in every other way. Regardless, the results were amazing. Not as amazing as yours, though.
Deeba PAB
Oh this is wonderful and so decadent Barbara. I want to make it all over again. What a super combination. We're done with strawberries here, but I think cherries might work too. I would have licked my plate too! Nom nom nom!!