Pudding!!!

Oh, squee! It's here! My pudding mold! It's so cute! I can't wait to use it! I feel so properly Dickensian. Truth be told, I'm not fond of Dickens. But Agatha Christie, whose work I am fond of, wrote a short story about Hercule Poirot called "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding." It's quite worth the read; a cute little story about English Christmas traditions, with midnight Mass, Christmas dinner (complete with pudding), playing in the snow... Right, I've gotten sidetracked (as usual).

Pudding mold.

I'm going to make a steamed pudding and it's going to be pudding-y. Well not pudding, as in the custardy dessert. Hmm, actually I'm not sure what this will be like. Judging from  my Boston brown bread, it'll be, um, cake-y? Perhaps I should lower my expectations and hope for edible? Besides what sort of pudding should I make? Plum pudding? Figgie pudding? Perhaps I should play it safe(r) and go with a chocolate pudding?

A soft dough.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Meh, I should stop dithering and look at recipes.

Dough rolled out.

Cranberry pudding! I admit I'm choosing this one because the Beta Taster found some cranberries that have been sitting in the freezer for nearly a year. Perhaps I ought to do something with them. Besides I hate seeing food go to waste. (They've been in the freezer so they're still good, right?<Pause, while I go try one.> Tastes ok to me. Onward!)

Pudding rolled up.

As usual, we going to have to scale back on the recipe. I got a baby mold that only holds 2 cups. So scaling will be pretty drastic. The recipe starts with a quart of flour or 4 cups. Perhaps I'll try one-eighth-ing the recipe. Let's see what happens.

Steaming.

Cranberry Pudding
(Adapted from The Sweet Home Cook Book, date unknown)
Serves 2-3

1/2 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup cranberries
~1 tablespoon sugar

1. Sift together first 3 ingredients.
2. Add milk to make soft dough.
3. Roll out to a thin oblong.
4. Sprinkle with cranberries and sugar. Roll up like a cinnamon roll.
5. Place in well greased mold.
6. Steam 1 1/2 hours.

Cranberry pudding.

Results: Well, hmm. It tastes a bit like a biscuit with cranberries. It's good though. And now I want to make another. It may need more cranberries next time. Also, it tasted a bit bread-like. I may have gotten too much flour in the dough when I was rolling it out since I didn't want it to stick to the counter. Perhaps I should have simply stirred in the cranberries and foregone the rolling out of the dough. I'll do that next time. The Beta Taster wasn't too impressed. He said it's a bit bland. But I had no trouble eating it.

Finished product.