Clonlara Apple Pudding or Windfall Apple Pudding

The good old apple trees are still hanging on to some of their apples and will do for quite some time yet...but I availed myself of some more of those crispy crunchies lying happily on the ground to make my first Steamed Pudding of the season now that our wood stove is up and cranking....no wasted energy on boiling water for hours on end as we are using the stove to heat the house.

Ta dah!! The first Steamed Pudding arrives safely upturned onto it's plate - juices flowing and apples cooked to perfection.

Before you begin put a double boiler on the stove and get to a gentle rolling boil while you make the pudding. Please check the pan regularly to make sure you are not running out of water as this pudding steams for about 2 hours!!

THE RECIPE from Irish Traditional Food by Theodora FitzGibbon

Ingredients:

For the dough:
1 ½ cups of white flour, about 7 ozs
 
2 teaspoons baking powder
 
½ teaspoon salt
 
3 oz shredded suet, just less than 1 cup (you can use butter here if you like but it doesn't work as well as the suet...the butter can make the dough greasier and heavier so try to get suet if you can)
 
3/8 cup/about 3 fl ozs iced water
 
2 tablespoons sugar

1. Sift the flour, salt, sugar, baking powder and nutmeg together then shred the suet or butter from the fridge or freezer (the shortening needs to be very cold) into the dry ingredients...I use a grater and literally grate the shortening with that.

2. Rub the suet into the flour until well blended but don't work too much - just like regular pastry you don't want to warm it up.

3. Add water a little at a time until you get a cohesive stiff dough.

4. Roll out the dough to fit the bowl with enough left over to make a 'cap' for the top of the pudding. Press the dough and mold into the bowl as necessary.

I used a 3 cup/24 fl.oz bowl...which must be steamable:

FILLING:

4 large apples, cored and chopped into medium sized pieces

2oz/half a stick of butter

3oz /3/8 cup  sugar

4oz/ 1/2 cup apricot jam...a nice tangy one

1. Cook the apple chunks with the butter, apricot jam and sugar until soft but not broken.

2. Cool and then pour into the prepared pastry lined bowl.

3. Put the cap on and seal using some of the juices from the apple to make the seal stick...it's ok if there's a big clunky rim around the edge as you see below...this is how your pudding should look before she goes for her steam!!

Then we cut a round of greaseproof paper to cover the bowl generously....cover the bowl, fold paper over down the sides and secure with an elastic band, or for purists with some nice string.

Now cut a circle of aluminium foil and do the same until you end up with what you see below

Now pop your little pudding into the top of the boiler...put the lid back on and get the kettle on for a cuppa while you wait for your pudding to be cooked.

Allow to steam continuously for about 2 hours...remove from the double boiler, remove the paper and aluminium 'caps' and  allow to cool somewhat for about 15 minutes before you unmold.

 

Now here comes the fun part - the unmolding...first run a knife gently around the edge of the pudding being careful not to break the pastry, then cover the pudding bowl with an appropriately sized other bowl...remember the juices will flow when you cut into the pudding so you want somewhere to catch those juices...wear oven gloves to stop getting burned from the hot pudding bowl now flip the whole thing upside down and hope the pudding conveniently falls out into the bowl...good luck with that. Mine just popped right out!! YEA!!!

You may have already twigged to the fact that this is a pudding for the strong of constitution, it is what we call in Blighty "STODGY"...Oxford English Dictionary definition of which is as follows: "(of food) heavy, filling, indigestible"...well I don't know about that last word I managed to digest it quite easily thank you very much but it certainly is a stolid dessert not for the feint of heart!!  So here we have the pudding just before cutting...SO neat and cute, like a hat without a brim!! Do serve hot with lashings of good cream or English custard...the resultant juices that flow are very sweet and delicious!!

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