This very arrogantly named pudding was one of the Bake Off’s many demanding challenges. I have made it once before, in my early cooking days. Back in the days when I regard a chilli con carne is my killer recipe, and most of the time I was just surviving on instant noodles really. I think I was trying to impress somebody when I flicked through the cookery book and picked the most promising recipe. I mean what could be more promising than Queen of Puddings??
In short, queen of puddings is a baked breadcrumb thickened custard, spread with raspberry jam and topped with meringue. It’s as British as fish and chips, I suppose, and certainly something I’ve not heard of back in Hong Kong.
I had some stale bread in the bread bin and I was trying to create something nice from it, my normal reaction would be a bread and butter pudding but we had that last week… Then queen of puddings suddenly entered my greedy mind and here it is:
Queen of Puddings
Ingredients
- 300 ml full fat milk
- 35 g breadcrumb
- 2 large eggs
- zest of 1/2 lemon
- 60 g caster sugar
- 3 tbsp raspberry jam
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 160'C/fan 140'C/gas mark 3.
- In a saucepan, bring the milk up just to simmering point and switch the heat off. Stir in breadcrumbs and the lemon zest. Leave to rest for 20 minutes so the breadcrumb has time to swell up and mingle with the zest.
- In a mixing http://healthsavy.com/product/priligy/ bowl, mix together 1 whole egg, 1 egg yolk (save the egg white for the meringue) and 30g of caster sugar.
- When the milk mixture is cooled, pour into the egg mixture and mix well. Divide into 3 ramekins and place in a roasting tin.
- Prepare the bain-marie: pour boiling water in the roasting tin until it comes up to half the height of the ramekins. Carefully put in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes until set.
- Lift the ramekins out of the roasting tin, leave to cool for 15 minutes.
- Microwave the jam for 15 sec to loosen, spread on top of the cooled custard.
- In a mixing bowl, beat the egg white with an electric whisk till it's stiff, gradually add in the rest of the sugar (a tablespoon at a time). You should end up with a shiny stiff mixture.
- Spoon the egg white on top and put them back in the oven to bake for 20-30 minutes or until the top is pale golden.
This recipe can easily be doubled and be made in a normal sized pie dish, I didn’t want to make too much as this is best eaten hot and fresh.
Ash was crazy about the meringue and I love sweet baked eggy dessert. It’s a fairly straight forward dessert to make, the preparation time looks quite long mainly due to the fact that you have to leave the mixture to cool. But all in all I think it’s a good way to use up some breadcrumb and egg. You can also use blackberry jam, or replace the lemon zest with orange zest.
