Daring Bakers: Steamed Suet Pudding

Steamed Ginger Suet Pudding.  Serve with golden syrup and more chopped glacé ginger.

It's a good thing I live in Asia because I left this to the last minute but can still post on the April 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge on time because we're a few hours ahead of the West. In fact, I only started making the dish at 9.30pm last night!

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 joined the Daring Bakers last month and I was looking forward to my first challenge, but when I saw it was a steamed suet pudding, it didn't make me jump for joy.

It's not as though I wasn't familiar with steamed puddings ­­– they're big in Asia, and there are a lot of tasty ones here. I just wasn't keen on keeping my gas going for two to three, or even four hours.

So instead of one big pudding, I decided to make several smaller ones in little fluted moulds. It took only 45 minutes. Also, about a month ago, I got the Tupperware Steam It, a "revolutionary" type of steamer based on the characteristics of the traditional bamboo steamer, but made of plastic and able to withstand the heat of a wok. It was the first time I had tried it and I was not disappointed. You can read about it here, and here's my picture of it. Yes, it actually sits directly in the wok with the fire below.

Tupperware's 'Steam It', the brand's new steamer. It might only be available in Malaysia at the moment though.

The moulds went into the top tier. My mistake was to fill them to the top and wrap the aluminium foil too tightly. The puddings rose a lot while cooking, pushed against the foil and came out lopsided! I was too tired to take a picture then, so I removed the puddings from the moulds and refrigerated them. Early this morning, I put them back in the steamer to reheat and soften. This is what they look like.

The wonky steamed puddings! They're being reheated here. For the main picture, I levelled the bottom of one of the puddings so it sits evenly.

You can get the original recipe here. I followed the basic recipe but added 70g glacé ginger (chopped medium fine) to the mix. I had half a box of vegetable suet, but it seemed to have gone mouldy (my mistake; I didn't refrigerate it), so I used Crisco brand vegetable shortening instead. Because I used 6 half-cup moulds, it took only 45 minutes. It's advisable to use bigger ramekins and fill them up to three-quarters full so that the batter doesn't spill over.