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Food

Sussex Pond Pudding Recipe

A suet pastry laced with lemon, sugar, and butter. It’s the best pond water you’ll ever taste.
Sussex Pond Pudding Recipe

"When you turn out the dish, it becomes a pond of delicious, sweet, lemony syrup."

Ingredients

2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup shredded beef suet or vegetable suet
⅔ cup milk
2 sticks + 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 scant cup light brown sugar
1 each large lemon
string
1 ½ liter basin

Directions

1. Mix the flour and suet together in a bowl, and then add the milk to make a dough. It should be soft but sufficiently firm to roll out into a circle large enough to line the pudding basin.

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2. Cut a quarter out of the circle so that you can make a cone shape with the dough to fit more easily in the pudding basin, and leave your leftover dough for the lid (put this slice of dough aside). Butter a pudding basin well and drop the pastry into it, flattening it at the bottom, and joining up the edges where the slice was taken out.

3. Mix the sugar and butter together and put it into the lined basin. Prick the lemon all over as much as you can with a roasting fork or skewer so that the juices can escape, then push it into the butter mixture. Remold the pastry for the top and roll it out into a circle to fit the top of the pudding bowl. Lay it over the filling and press the edges of the dough together so that the filling is sealed in.

4. Take a piece of foil big enough to fit over the basin, with at least an extra 5 centimeters all around. Make a pleat down the middle of the foil, place it over the top of the basin, and tie it in place with string. It should look like a parcel with a string handle so it can be lifted in and out of a saucepan.

5. Bring a large pan half-filled with water to the boil and lower in the pudding. Cover and leave to simmer for 4 hours. Don't let the water stop boiling, and if the level drops, lift up the basin and top up the pan with more boiling water.

6. To serve, lift out, remove the foil, and loosen the sides with a small sharp knife. (It can be kept hot for another hour or so until it's needed.) Put a deep dish over the basin and quickly turn the whole thing upside down.

From How-To: Make Sussex Pond Pudding with Ronnie Murray