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.First things first - what is suet? It is the hard but flaky fat found on the inside of a cow or sheep around the kidneys and that area of the body.
Okay, suet is an ingredient that is just tooooo daring for me! I’m sorry, but how a person could seek out this ingredient, bake with it, and knowingly eat it is more than I can comprehend. Needless to say, Smart Balance was my healthy vegan substitute.
Another thing I don’t understand is why one would boil or steam a cake for hours when one could bake it in the oven in 20 minutes. But such was the challenge and I made a version of Spotted Dick, a boiled pudding, using chocolate chips instead of currants.
I made a single serving recipe, which may be the reason my batter was rather wet. But I was able to dust it with a little flour and roll it easily in parchment paper.
I didn’t have a traditional pudding cloth (why would I?) to wrap and boil the pudding in, so I wrapped it loosely in a double layer of foil.
I placed it in a pot of gently boiling water and let it cook for about an hour.
I unrolled it, let it cool, then cut it in two. The cake was firm with a moist crumb.
Yum, fresh strawberries to enjoy with my pudding.
Other than a slightly boiled flavor, it was a good dessert - 3 out of 5 stars.
