The Calendar of Puddings

Well, it's been a little while between drinks here at the Leaflocker. Since the last post I've back in Australia for longer than three weeks for the first time in six years, and I'm also back to living in my parent's house for the first time in a decade. Despite our fears, I'm finding the whole thing rather pleasant, thanks in no small part to the fact that being back near my mother's house means being back near my mother's cooking on a regular basis.

I've always remembered my Mum's cooking as fabulous, and spending time in the kitchen with her over the last month or so has been a major highlight of returning home. She recently acquired this gem in a thrift store, the fabled South Australian Country Women's Association Calendar of Puddings (Brown's Well Community Library's loss is our gain). Every time I think about how absurd it is that anyone would need a pudding for every night of year, how many eggs would be consumed, how many pounds of butter, I get the giggles, so I was more than a little surprised when I met my mother's eye and we together resolved in all seriousness to give it a go.

Of course, we're not making sweets every night. That would be silly. No-one needs that much sugar in their system (it's not caffeine), and setting ourselves up to do something each and every day is just setting ourselves up for disappointment, but I reckon we can work something out.

The rules we've set ourselves are very complicated:

1) Pick one pudding from the options each week

2) Make and eat the pudding

With three weeks or so until the birth of my firstborn and her second grandchild, it's likely a terrible time to be starting a new, extremely long-term series on the old blog, but in a classic case of the bear in the woods, I've decided that there's no point making a regular pudding if we don't record our thoughts, so it's time to blow the dust of the Leaflocker once again.

My mother took the idea and ran with it last week before I'd even convinced myself that she was serious, preparing October 20th's Baked Lemon Delicious (Swiss), which is an old family favourite recipe, and a great place to start a project that promises to be a little experimental. Having done this one a number of times over the last few years, I was amused to find that apart from forming a satisfying looking top crust, her version also failed to solidify, something that has dogged my attempts at the recipe in the past. But it's a favourite recipe for a reason, largely because as the name promises, it makes for a delicious dessert even when it turns out to be more of a custard than a pudding. Served with a generous side of icecream, it tasted like sweet, sweet lemony sunshine.

Wait, wait wait... the end of the recipe says 'serve hot or cold'. That can't possibly be right. I can't imagine what this would be like cold and it certainly never survives long enough to get cold before it's consumed. It feels almost criminal to do something like that to a dessert which brings such joy by being dangerously hot, but 79 Country Women can't be wrong, can they? Note to self: Next time you make this, make two, so that you can throw one in the fridge, just to check.

I guess the Leaflocker is a cooking blog now?