Food Experiments: Malva Pudding

I've been wanting to make malva pudding for a long, long time. It's a dessert that I've only ever eaten in safari camps in Africa, and it's also one of the most rich and delicious desserts I've ever tasted. It's also incredibly hard to find a recipe for, and it seems like there's quite a lot of different names for it and variations on it. The one I made tonight isn't quite what I remember and am searching for, but it's close. Maybe I will top the leftovers tomorrow with some custard sauce to try to get closer...sooner or later, I need to cross this off my bucket list!

Malva pudding is similar to bread pudding, especially in texture, but it has a somewhat sweeter, nuttier taste than any bread pudding I've ever had. To me, it brings back beautiful memories of sitting in thatched, open air huts for dinner, with the smell of a mopane wood fire blowing in and more stars than you could probably see anywhere in the United States waiting just outside. It is the sort of dessert that I think is best appreciated after spending a whole day outside--partially from my nostalgia for the safari days and partially because spending a whole day running around outside before eating this is the only way to stave off the immense guilt that I'm feeling for eating it. In short, my dessert experiments that help those of you with new year's resolutions are over!

Malva Pudding

I would start by serving small portions of this dessert. When finished, it looks like a pretty bland cake, but it is deceptively rich!

Ingredients:

CAKE:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon apricot jam
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon butter (a generous tablespoon)
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 1/3 cup milk

SAUCE

• 3/4 cup fresh cream
• 7 TB butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup hot water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat or whip the sugar and eggs, preferably in a food processor, until thick and lemon colored. Then, add the apricot jelly (or jam) and mix thoroughly.
2. Sieve together the flour, soda and salt. Melt the butter (do not boil!) and add the vinegar. Add this mixture, as well as the milk, to the egg mixture in the processor, alternately with the flour. Beat well.
3. Pour into an oven-proof dish (I used a tall 8x8 ceramic pan), and bake for 45 to 50 minutes. Meanwhile, in a pot, melt together the ingredients for the sauce. When the cake is halfway baked, take it out of oven. Make holes in cake and pour the sauce over the pudding. Return to the oven. When finished, the cake should still be slightly jiggly. (Hint: the softer and more pudding-y parts taste much better than the parts that look completely solid and cooked like cake. Mmm butter sauce!)