Try this get rich quick scheme
IN my recurring anxiety dream, hordes of friends are streaming into my apartment for a party while I keep opening kitchen cabinets and finding only two cans of black beans. What’s reassuring is that I never dream about dessert. Even my subconscious seems to know there will always be pudding cake.
This old standby from my mother’s 1956 Betty Crocker cookbook has saved more than a few last-minute dinner parties when I needed something irresistibly homemade but had no time to run out for special ingredients.
Everyone is always impressed by a cake that makes its own sauce, never suspecting that it starts with ingredients so basic. As long as you have a lemon, milk and eggs, or cocoa, milk and brown sugar, you’re halfway to the most classic rendition of a quintessential American dessert. As mood food, a pudding cake is somewhere between a souffle and an apple crisp: dramatic because a layer of cake rises over a pool of sauce as the whole thing bakes, and homey-comforting because you spoon it up like pudding or apples.
The one drawback is that the original recipe now seems more like an invitation to a coma than a dessert for company. Sugar was poured with a much freer hand back in the middle of the last century, and the emphasis was more on that straight-ahead sweetness than on the tartness of citrus, whether lemon, lime or orange. Even the old-fashioned chocolate variation, made with cocoa powder, tastes a little pallid in an age of 83% cacao.
Bringing pudding cakes up to panna cotta speed is surprisingly simple, though. Key limes substituted for the usual lemon or lime juice and zest make a radical difference. The tiny little limes (from Mexico despite their Floridian name) have a much tangier flavor than the usual Persian kind. That, coupled with cutting back the sugar, produces a cake with much livelier flavor.
Even headier is a pudding cake modeled on a beach-worthy drink. Dark rum substitutes for some of the juice while coconut milk supplants some of the regular milk. A splash of Angostura bitters, the secret ingredient in any great rum cocktail, brings all the tastes together.
A few simple tweaks
CHOCOLATE pudding cake is just as easy to update if you start with any of the superb cocoa powders now available.
The pudding cake I grew up eating was made with Hershey’s, which is both bitter and bland. Substituting a high-grade Dutch process cocoa makes a deep, dark difference instantly, one that is amplified if you use half-and-half rather than milk and extra butter for chocolaty richness. Valrhona, Fauchon, La Maison du Chocolat are all intense choices as is a cheaper brand, Master Choice.
Pudding cakes are so simple you could make them in your sleep. For the citrus kind, you just mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, etc.), then stir in the wet (egg yolks, milk, juice, rum, etc.) and fold in beaten egg whites. As with a souffle or a flourless chocolate cake, you get better volume from the whites if you start with eggs at room temperature. They should be beaten just until stiff peaks form; if they get too rigid they are harder to fold evenly into the batter and the top layer will be more air than cake.
A cocoa pudding cake is made more like brownies, but with no eggs and very little liquid. Baking powder rather than egg whites makes the cake rise, and the sauce forms after very hot water is poured over a mixture of cocoa powder and brown sugar distributed over the top.
With any pudding cake, kosher salt rather than “when it rains it pours” improves the flavor because the crystals are bigger and do not dissolve so thoroughly so that the balance of saltiness to sweetness is better.
Pudding cakes made with beaten egg whites would probably turn into souffles if they were just rammed into the oven. Setting the baking dish into a larger dish filled with hot water guarantees that the batter bakes into cake and the liquid pools into sauce.
A souffle pan looks best for presenting a pudding cake at the table, but you can also use a one-quart casserole. For a chocolate pudding cake, a 9-inch-square pan is your best bet, and there’s no need to use a bain marie.
Updating the pudding cake does have one complication, though. You may need to make a special trip for Key limes. Coconut milk and cocoa powder, though, are as shelf-stable as canned black beans.
*
Rum and coconut pudding cake
Total time: About 55 minutes
Servings: 4 to 6
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon sea or kosher salt
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup dark rum
1/8 teaspoon Angostura bitters
2 large eggs, separated
1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flour, sugar and sea salt in a mixing bowl and stir to mix.
2. Combine the coconut milk, orange juice, milk, rum and bitters in a 2-cup measuring cup. Add the egg yolks and whisk or stir to blend. Stir into the dry ingredients and mix until no lumps remain.
3. Beat the egg whites in a second bowl just until stiff peaks form. Gently but thoroughly fold into the batter. Scrape into a souffle dish or 1-quart casserole. Set the dish into a large baking dish and pour hot water in to a depth of about 1 inch.
4. Bake for 50 minutes. Serve warm.
Each of 6 servings: 180 calories; 3 grams protein; 23 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 6 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 72 mg. cholesterol; 77 mg. sodium.
*
Key lime pudding cake
Total time: About 1 hour
Servings: 4 to 6
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon sea or kosher salt
2 large eggs, separated
1 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons freshly grated Key lime zest
1/4 cup freshly squeezed Key lime juice (about 6 limes)
1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Beat the egg yolks in a second bowl. Add the milk, lime zest and juice and stir into the dry ingredients, mixing well to make a smooth batter.
3. In a clean bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, gently but thoroughly fold them into the batter. Transfer to a souffle dish or 1-quart casserole. Place in a larger baking dish and pour hot water into the larger dish to a depth of about 1 inch.
4. Bake 50 minutes. Serve warm or cold, ladling the top and sauce onto dessert plates.
Each of 6 servings: 135 calories; 4 grams protein; 24 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 3 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 75 mg. cholesterol; 87 mg. sodium.
*
Hot fudge pudding cake
Total time: 55 minutes
Servings: 8
Note: This is best if you use a top-quality Dutch process cocoa such as Valrhona, Fauchon or La Maison du Chocolat.
7tablespoons top-quality Dutch-process cocoa, sifted, divided
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/2 cup half-and-half
4tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1 cup roughly chopped toasted cashews, pecans or walnuts
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
Vanilla ice cream (optional)
1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine 4 tablespoons of the cocoa with the sugar, flour, baking powder and salt. Toss with a fork until well mixed.
2. Stir in the half-and-half and butter and mix well. Fold in the nuts. Spread the batter evenly into a 9-inch round or square baking dish, smoothing the top.
3. Combine the remaining cocoa with the brown sugar, mixing well, and distribute evenly over the top of the batter. Pour 1 3/4 cups hot water evenly over the top.
4. Bake 45 minutes. Remove the dish to a trivet to cool slightly and scoop the pudding onto dessert plates, with or without ice cream.
Each serving: 362 calories; 6 grams protein; 54 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams fiber; 16 grams fat; 7 grams saturated fat; 21 mg. cholesterol; 281 mg. sodium.