Daring Bakers: English Pudding

It's time for another Daring Baker's reveal!

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.   The goals of the challenge were to 1) make a suet pudding using real suet or as close a replacement as one can manage or is acceptable; and 2) to cook it by steaming or an even more traditional method by boiling tied up in a cloth.  I've been on a quest to lose the remainder of my baby weight, so I opted not to use suet.  In addition, it's actually a bit harder to find here in the US as opposed to places like the UK or Australia.  For those not familiar with suet, it's the back fat of an animal, typically a pig or cow. You can usually substitute lard, shortening, or butter for the suet in most pudding recipes.  Also, pudding in this instance refers not to the yogurty textured stuff made with milk and sugar and flavorings, but a dense moist cake, or a filled pastry.

The closet thing in the States to a traditional savory pudding is a casserole or pot pie, but I prefer the sweeter side of life.  I chose to make the classic Spotted Dick for two reasons: 1) it sounded relatively tame ingredient-wise, and 2) it's a funny name that elicits the best faces from people when you talk about it.  Now before you start taking me to task for my language, "dick" is aparently the traditional colloquial phrase for pudding and the spots of Spotted Dick are from the dried fruits that stud the pudding.  You can draw your own conclusions from the shape of the pudding, you dirty birdie!