Image Details: ‘Malva Pudding’ by Jon Mountjoy, via Flickr.
Here is the recipe from Episode 4 of the Podcast, where I was joined by Justus to make the South African staple that is Malva Pudding. This is definitely not a diet pudding. Calorie content is unknown, but I suspect it would be red across the board on the traffic light system. You do, however, only live once, so give it a try!
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups of plain flour (cake flour in SA)
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs, room temperature
1 cup caster sugar
2 tbsp butter, room temperature
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 tbsp apricot jam
1/2 tsp finely grated orange rind (optional)
4 tbsp orange juice
1 tbsp vinegar
For the sauce
3/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup cream (not specified but I would use single cream)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup water
Baking tray approximately 30cm x 25cm x 4cm.
Method
1) Preheat the oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F.
2) Combine the cake flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Sift the whole mixture together through the sieve three times.
3) Beat the eggs together, whilst adding small amounts of the caster sugar at a time, until the all the caster sugar has been added and the mixture is light and fluffy. This step is essential to the success of the recipe.
4) Heat the butter, evaporated milk, jam, orange rind if added, orange juice and vinegar together in a pan. Stir vigorously throughout the heating process to avoid the mixture curdling.
5) Once the butter is just melted, beat the mixture together rapidly with an electric mixer.
6) Take the flour mixture and add 1/3 of it to the egg mixture and fold in gently. Repeat this step with the butter mixture. Repeat, alternating the flour and butter mixture until it is all added. Remember to fold, not stir, at this point.
7) Quickly beat the mixture for 20 seconds using the electric mixer.
8) Lightly grease the baking tray or spray it with fancy pants Cook ‘n’ Bake. Pour the mixture into the pan. This needs to be done fairly quickly after mixing, so that the mixture does not have time to cool down too much, as the butter will start to solidify again if it does.
9) Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 45 minutes.
Sauce
10) When there is about 10 minutes left to go with the baking of the sponge, put all of the sauce ingredients in the pan and heat it up, stirring continuously until all of the sugar is dissolved.
11) Remove sponge from oven after the 45 minutes of baking. Take a fork and prick the top of the sponge all over. Pour the butter sauce all over the cake.
12) Serve! Usual accompaniments are custard or ice cream in SA, although I think it would work very nicely with some creme fraiche and summer fruits to cut through the sweetness.
Enjoy!