Sussex Pond Pudding

Sussex Pond Pudding

Sussex Pond Pudding is a steamed suet pudding that contains a whole lemon as well as butter and sugar. When cut open the butter, sugar and lemon juice form a pond in the dish, also there is a surprise lemon in the middle!

(serves 3 or 4)

2 oz Suet
6 oz Self-raising Flour
Pinch of salt
6 fl oz water
1 Lemon, preferably thin-skinned, juicy and unwaxed
4 oz butter plus a little more for greasing the pudding basin
4 oz sugar

Grease a pudding basin with butter. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl and mix with the suet and salt. Add enough water that when mixed into a pastry dough it just picks up all the flour, then maybe a teaspoon more so that it is pliant and easy to roll.

On a floured surface roll out the dough into a big circle. Cut out a quarter to lay aside to make the lid. Use the rest to line the pudding basin, sealing the seam by dipping your fingers in water and pressing it together.

Above the basin stab the lemon twenty or so times with a skewer, allowing the juice to run in, and then put it into the basin. Surround it with bits of the butter and the sugar.

Roll out the remaining pastry dough into a circle that will top the pudding. Stick it firmly on top, using a little water to seal it. Then close up the pudding bowl. I re-use plastic Christmas Pudding bowls but any bowl will do if you wrap greaseproof paper tightly with a pudding cloth or alternatively cover it in foil.

It needs to be steamed for a long time; four hours in a normal (tightly lidded) pan, two hours in a pressure cooker. A pressure cooker is nothing to be scared of, though I will admit to bringing the laptop to the kitchen to keep an eye and ear on it while steaming.

Carefully remove the pudding package from the pan, removing any cover and taking the lid off. Put an upside-down serving bowl on top, then turn it over. Hopefully it should turn easily out, and not collapse. Cut open to release the “pond”. It should be a lemon-butter-sugar caramel sauce and when you cut open the lemon it is almost candied. Serve with ice cream.