HELSTON PUDDING

As I write, it is Sunday morning my husband is cooking the Roast Pork for lunch and I am prepping the dessert. Helston Pudding is a very old recipe, steeped in the long forgotten past and I am working from my old recipe book, which, for once, has some quantities and timings given!

Butter a pudding basin and prep a saucepan, with folded sheets of kitchen paper in the bottom [to protect the base of the pudding] - that’s not in the book!

2 oz each of:

raisins, currants, suet, sugar, breadcrumbs, ground rice and finally plain flour.

add: 

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ teaspoon of mixed spice

pinch salt

milk to mix.

Clotted cream to serve

I decided to use light muscovado sugar and vegetable Atora. I carefully started to add the milk and reckon it takes about 5 fl oz. I used semi skimmed as I did not have whole milk.

Just mix it all together. Very easy. Then tip into your buttered basin, cover with a lid of parchment and foil and place on the folded paper, then carefully pour in boiling water and set to steam for 2 hours, checking periodically the water levels.

I have seen more modern versions with things like chopped dried apricots in the mix, but find it unlikely that our forebears would have used such a luxury item. Of course they would not have used [or heard of] muscovado either!! Castor sugar, I would imagine.

The pudding was delicious and we all enjoyed it!