Steamed Pear And Ginger Pudding

[jamjar]

Steamed pear and ginger pudding

I love steamed puddings. They're light and lovely and comforting, they often contain wonderful things, like ginger or blackberries or jam, and they have names like "sticky toffee pudding" which tells you pretty much everything you want to know about the pudding in question.*

They're also very hard to get wrong. It's very difficult to burn a steamed pudding, and I've never had one come out badly, ever.

This recipe was the desert for the family lunch, so it's suitable for 8-12 people. Amounts for the ginger and pear topping are approximate-- it's to taste and to amount, so if you want a lot of topping, add more pears, if you want more ginger, add more.

For this much mixture, I used a 1.5 litre pudding basin. Butter it well before you start.



3 large pears, peeled and sliced pretty finely.
Stem ginger, cut in to strips -depends on your taste, but at least five of those balls, or two big tablespoons
A lump of butter
The ginger syrup from the jar (maybe two or three tbsp)


First time I did this, we melted the butter, add the pears and syrup and let them soften, then added the ginger, then put this in the bottom of the pudding basin, but in retrospect, cooking it first probably wasn't necessary and we could have got away with just putting it all in the bottom of the pudding basin.


Basic steamed pudding mixture (for 8-12)

450g self-raising flour
A good pinch of salt
250g butter
4 heaped tbsp caster sugar
4 eggs
3 tbsp milk
Zest of one lemon

Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. Rub in the butter. Add the caster sugar and the eggs and milk and mix until smooth. Add the lemon zest and mix it all together.

Pour on top of the pear and ginger in the pudding basin.

Cover the top of the pudding basin with greaseproof paper or foil-- use either two layers of greaseproof paper/baking parchment or a layer of foil, pleat it in the middle so it can expand, tie it securely around the pudding basin, under the brim.

Steam for 1 ½-2 hours.


*let's ignore Spotted Dick for the moment, whose name (thankfully) tells you nothing about how nice the actual pudding is.
Crossposted to palacedomestica.

Comments

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmm. Ginger. Mmmmm. Pears.

[jamjar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was pretty much the train of thought behind the desert. Ginger = good, pears = good, steamed pudding = good, so steamed pear and ginger pudding = good³.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I'd throw in an extra multiplication factor there, for the interaction between them, so good4