Pine Orange and Chocolate Pudding for the Centenary of The Magic Pudding

Recently, I visited the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum at Faulconbridge in The Blue Mountains in New South Wales.  It is an auspicious  time to do so, as this year marks 100 years since the publication of Norman Lindsay's famous children's book, The Magic Pudding.

I decided to celebrate the centenary of publication of The Magic Pudding by making my own steamed pudding in a pudding bowl, just like Albert, the Magic Pudding.  However, unlike Albert, my pudding is neither (a) a "cut and come again" pudding; nor (b) capable of changing flavours.  Having recently acquired Donna Hay's new book, Modern Baking, I was delighted to find that Donna had featured a recipe for a Clementine and Chocolate Pudding.  This fit the bill perfectly for my tribute to The Magic Pudding.

A few days after I made this pudding, I came home from work to watch Lyndey Milan's Taste of Australia on SBS Food, and laughed to see that she had filmed at the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum in 2014, and she also had made a steamed pudding to celebrate The Magic Pudding (a Coffee Banana Ginger Pudding).   You know what they say - great minds think alike ;)

As you can see from the title of this post and the photos, I made a modification to Donna's recipe.  She used candied clementines on the base (top) of her pudding.  I went to four different gourmet food shops in the 'burbs and could not find any, so knowing that I had candied (glace) pineapple at home, I decided to use that instead.  

I loved the flavour of the marmalade with the pineapple and chocolate - it would have been great with custard, but my very limited local supermarket didn't sell custard powder or less than a litre of ready-made custard, so instead I opted for whipped cream on the side of my pudding:

I gave a slice of pudding to my friend Wayne, and he said that the pudding was "moist and moorish". There you go - a ringing endorsement.  (I was pleased!)

If you would like to make this pudding for yourself, you will need:

3/4 cup orange marmalade
2 tablespoons sugar
200g thinly sliced candied fruit (clementines or orange slices or pineapple rings!)
10 pitted Medjool dates
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup boiling water
60g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs
3/4 cup self raising flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup almond meal
100g melted dark chocolate

Line a 1.75ml pudding steamer with baking paper.  I found this very difficult and next time, I would just grease the steamer like I usually do.

Put the marmalade and sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil.  Continue to boil for 2-3 minutes until slightly reduced, then strain into a bowl.  Chill the strained marmalade mixture until cold.

Place the sliced, candied fruit into the base of the lined pudding steamer, then cover with the chilled strained marmalade. 

Put the dates, baking soda and boiling water into a bowl and let it stand for 10 minutes.  After that time, place the mixture into a food processor and blitz until smooth.

Put the butter, brown sugar, and vanilla into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and beat until well creamed.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  Add the flour, cocoa powder, almond meal, melted chocolate and date mixture and beat until just combined.  Scrape the batter into the pudding bowl over the top of the fruit and marmalade, then secure the lid of the pudding steamer.

Put the pudding steamer into a large saucepan.  Pour boiling water down the side of the saucepan until it comes three quarters of the way up the side of the pudding steamer.  Cover the saucepan with a lid and let the pudding steam for two hours.  Keep an eye on the water levels and top up if needed, as if the pudding boils dry, it will burn (and it won't be great for your steamer or saucepan either).

After the allotted cooking time, remove the steamer from the saucepan and leave it to stand for 15 minutes.  Then comes the tricky part - remove the steamer lid, put your presentation plate on top of the steamer, then invert the steamer onto the plate to release the pudding (you hope!).

Serve the pudding warm in slices with cream, icecream, custard, chocolate sauce or all of the above!