The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

I wish I was more enthusiastic for this challenge. British pudding makes me think of just a big meat pie and to be honest, the thought of steaming it seemed like it would produce less  flaky pastry and more like something Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs would want to make a coat out of. Yea, that’s the image I had stuck into my head going into this. Gooey meat pie and gloppy wettish half cooked pie crust. Top that off with being the busiest I think I’ve ever been at work (Doug reminded me night before last at 1am “Hey, don’t you need to do your Daring Baker’s post?” and I frantically tried to figure out when I’d have time between spending every waking moment working on our super secret project coming to theatres near you this summer (Oh yea, that delivered yesterday too….perfect timing to put this off till!)  to steam some pudding in the few hours I’d be home last night.) I’m shocked this came together! How wonderful that for the next 2 months, we’re delivering big stuff at work on the 27th…same day as Daring Bakers. If I’m alive 2 months from now, it will be with my face asleep on the keyboard.

Ok, so I didn’t use suet. Didn’t try to find it. Didn’t want to use it. As far as I’m concerned suet is for birds/birdseed. I think if the challenge would have been presented in such a way to not up front hit you with suet being fat from internal organs complete with pictures, maybe I’d have done it. I’m very open minded with food but some stuff I just don’t have any desire to try- like flaky cow kidney fat. Mmmm! So I used butter. I like butter. I was going to make a giant Natchitoches meat pie and use up the bacon fat in my fridge but after getting the wet skin image in Doug’s head and him not wanting to eat it, I figured something sweet would make whatever came out the pot easier to go down.

We could choose a sponge (cakey) type pudding or a crust pudding (crust and filling.) I went crust. The recipe is crazy simple- simpler and less fussy that a regular pie crust. I filled the pudding with caramelized apples (and yes, I see the messed-upness of making essentially uber American apple pie in a British pudding)  I have a large stock pot with steamer and pasta inserts and it worked perfectly for steaming the pudding. Since I waited til beyond the 11th hour to make this, there was no finding a good bowl to make this in- all mine are metal or melamine. So I used a souffle dish. I wasn’t being too picky and it still worked great. I let this bad boy steam 2.5 hours. The result?  meh. I think if I would have made a savory dish it would have been better but when it hit my mouth, I was thinking pie and was way let down by the springy texture the crust made and found myself longing for flaky crisp pie crust. Would have been lovely with pot pie type recipes though. Seemed like way too much work to steam the dish when I could have just as easily tossed it in the oven, but, that’s what made this challenge unique! Doug loved the thing as usual. It’s his breakfast as I type. Thankfully it didn’t look or feel like squishy old skin! Thanks Esther for this definitely different challenge! I love making things I normally would never think of.