Now that both the choir season and the semester are over, I feel as if I have hours more free time, both at work and at home. I spent all weekend replenishing our freezer stores. I'm going to continue with those
once-a-month freezer meals, because even if I plan to do more day-to-day cooking, meals in the freezer means I'm not tempted to spend money (that's not in the budget) on restaurant meals. I can't really do a month's worth of cooking in a day, whatever they think I should be able to do on the website. But in two afternoons I made twelve dinners for the freezer, and lunches for the whole week. I'm most proud, however, of the dessert I made.
When I was a kid, someone gave me a cookbook which purported to have recipes from Laura Ingalls Wilder's time. I had read those books many times, so it was a fitting gift. One of the recipes was for a cake that was cooked in boiling water, rather than baked. I imagine that in the time of wood stoves, it was easier to maintain a constant temperature boiling water bath than to maintain a constant temperature oven. It was the first time I had ever had what I would now call a steamed pudding, and I loved the moistness of this kind of dessert.
If you've never made one before, here's how it works. You make a fairly typical cake batter (this one is flavored with raspberries and vanilla rum), and pour it into a well-greased tin. I used a stainless steel mixing bowl, because I needed something that would fit in my 8 quart stock pot.
Wrap it with waxed paper, aluminum foil, and then tie it with string. One of the recipes suggested making a string handle, so that it would be easy to remove.
Place it in a pan with a rack, fill it half-way with boiling water, put the lid on, and then boil it for two hours. Unmold.
A very moist cake. I think it would be called a pudding (which I'd need to differentiate from the custard-style puddings common in America). I've also seen it called a sponge, but I can't figure out the difference between a sponge and a pudding. Can anyone from the UK or Australia help me out with that?
6 comments:
I love steamed cakes. It seems very Chinese to me because I grew up with lots of steamed buns and the sort.
I can't help out with the sponge/pudding query but the method you used reminded me of the traditional way of cooking Christmas Puddings - you needed to keep on topping up the boiling water. Same method for steak and kidney puddings - not a dessert!
I'm very keen to try the once a month cooking but it feels like I never have such a big block of time. It's not so much the cooking I need to make time for though, it's the shopping!
That's a type of cake I would like to try making.
That's a type of cake I would like to try making.
Thanks for the website. I will definitely be using this resource (although we really don't have the freezer space for a months worth of meals). Love the dessert, too!
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