How To Make The Perfect Lemon Pudding | Felicity Cloake's How to Make the Perfect...

Judging from the comments when I posted a photo of my recipe testing efforts for this column, it looks like I'm one of the few people who didn't grow with a dessert version of this, which Arabella Boxer describes as "a good, quick, easy-to-make hot pudding that has been almost forgotten". Known as Lemon Surprise, Lemon Delight, and even Lemon Magic Pudding, it's a winter dessert of the zesty, tangy kind, rather than the solid, comforting kind, with a "lovely little surprise." , to quote Margaret Costa, in the form of the sauce that appears, as if by magic, in the bottom of the dish after cooking. A good pudding, with the royal seal of approval from Mary Berry, Delia Smith and Nigel Slater, but without the stodge.
The pudding
Most recipes I try use a combination of butter and sugar, mixed with egg yolks, milk, lemon and a little flour to make a batter, then leavened with beaten egg whites, but there are a few outliers. First, Regula Ysewijn's castle pudding from his first book Pride and Pudding, which, strictly speaking, is not a self-sauced pudding, but a steamed lemon sponge, and so buttered and delicious, which I couldn't help but give it a mention for anyone looking for something a little beefier this time of year.
Heston Blumenthal's flourless example, based on a recipe from the kitchens of St John's College, University of Cambridge, is a water pudding, which, according to the Foods of England website, is a "simple, egg-and-lemon-like pudding foamed in water and baked, known from articles of press since the beginning of the 19th century". Its take, however, includes butter in somewhat larger quantities than the older examples, and somehow I end up with a delicately quivering and smooth lemon pudding, the texture of a jelly. light over a butter sauce. It's delicious, but not, I guess, quite as expected.
With the exception of New York Times pastry chef Karen DeMasco's recipe, which omits butter and uses buttermilk instead of milk, the others all differ only in the ratio of eggs, butter, sugar, milk and flour required. The lightest pudding,

Recipe Jan 26, 2023 0 43 Add to Reading List

How To Make The Perfect Lemon Pudding | Felicity Cloake's How to Make the Perfect...

Judging from the comments when I posted a photo of my recipe testing efforts for this column, it looks like I'm one of the few people who didn't grow with a dessert version of this, which Arabella Boxer describes as "a good, quick, easy-to-make hot pudding that has been almost forgotten". Known as Lemon Surprise, Lemon Delight, and even Lemon Magic Pudding, it's a winter dessert of the zesty, tangy kind, rather than the solid, comforting kind, with a "lovely little surprise." , to quote Margaret Costa, in the form of the sauce that appears, as if by magic, in the bottom of the dish after cooking. A good pudding, with the royal seal of approval from Mary Berry, Delia Smith and Nigel Slater, but without the stodge.

The pudding

Most recipes I try use a combination of butter and sugar, mixed with egg yolks, milk, lemon and a little flour to make a batter, then leavened with beaten egg whites, but there are a few outliers. First, Regula Ysewijn's castle pudding from his first book Pride and Pudding, which, strictly speaking, is not a self-sauced pudding, but a steamed lemon sponge, and so buttered and delicious, which I couldn't help but give it a mention for anyone looking for something a little beefier this time of year.

Heston Blumenthal is a 'pudding simple and resembling an egg and a lemon frothed in water'. Thumbnails of Felicity.

Heston Blumenthal's flourless example, based on a recipe from the kitchens of St John's College, University of Cambridge, is a water pudding, which, according to the Foods of England website, is a "simple, egg-and-lemon-like pudding foamed in water and baked, known from articles of press since the beginning of the 19th century". Its take, however, includes butter in somewhat larger quantities than the older examples, and somehow I end up with a delicately quivering and smooth lemon pudding, the texture of a jelly. light over a butter sauce. It's delicious, but not, I guess, quite as expected.

With the exception of New York Times pastry chef Karen DeMasco's recipe, which omits butter and uses buttermilk instead of milk, the others all differ only in the ratio of eggs, butter, sugar, milk and flour required. The lightest pudding,