Daring Bakers: Traditional British Pudding

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.

I made a Sussex Pond pudding.  I’ll admit, I used Crisco in place of suet.  The pudding was simple and unusual: essentially, a pie crust, filled with butter, brown sugar, and a whole lemon, then put in a heatproof bowl (I used Pyrex), covered in parchment paper and foil, and steamed in a pot on the stove for about 3 hours.  You prick the lemon before putting it in so the juices come out and make a sauce with the butter and brown sugar.

They tell you to make sure to use a thin-skinned lemon.  Well, I used the only kind of lemon being sold at Stop n Shop, and apparently the skin was not thin enough.  The bitter flavor of the pith really came out in the sauce, and although the first few bites were delicious, once I hit the bitterness I really couldn’t even stand to eat anymore.  I still think it’s ingenious, though – I’d like to try again using lemon zest and juice instead of the whole lemon (cool as the idea of the whole lemon is).

I’m not gonna lie: it’s a pretty ugly dessert, or at least my attempt at it was.  Here’s a picture just to prove I made it.

The sauce seeped out of the crust...yeah, it's pretty hideous.