(In the spirit of) Daring Bakers April: Pudding

I constantly rave about how being a Daring Kitchen member lets you try out things you would never have done before. Maybe that is especially true for this month's challenge.

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.

Suet, I learned through this challenge, is a hard, but flaky fat found in the area around the kidneys of a cow or sheep. I've never seen it anywhere here in Sweden, or even heard about it, but I'm sure it would be possible to get some, given you had the time to shop around. We didn't. The challenge said it could be substituted with hard, white vegetable fat or shortening. I'm sure we could have found something suitable, given we had the time to do some research. We didn't. Instead, we went outside the box, and inside the bone.

We made marrow pudding!

We figured this would count as being “in the spirit of the challenge” – it is a British pudding, made with a somewhat unusual animal product. The only thing that doesn't meet the requirements is that it's baked, not steamed.

The recipe comes from our dessert guru Jan Hedh. I've looked at the picture of the English marrow pudding in his book Deserter many times and thought that “hey, that looks good, but I'll never make it”. Well thanks to the Daring Bakers, we have! And it tasted lovely!

Esther, sorry for not making your challenge recipe, but thank you for giving us this opportunity to try something completely new!

Jan Hedh's English marrow pudding
from the book Desserter

8-10 portions (we halved the recipe)

200 g ox marrow
1½ dl cream
200 g eggs (about 4)
80 g sugar
10 g vanilla sugar
2 ml salt
200 g white bread, crust removed
200 g corinths
4 tbsp dark rum
Butter and sugar for the pan
4 tbsp dark rum for flambéeing
Caramel sauce for serving (recipe below)

Day 1:
Soak the marrow in cold water overnight. Change the water a few times.
Mix cream, eggs. sugar, vanilla sugar and salt. Pour the mixture over the bread. Let it stand overnight to swell.
Soak the corinths in the rum overnight.


It's hard to believe that this soaking goo can turn out so delicious! Thankfully, Sweden is a BSE-free zone, otherwise we wouldn't dare to eat this stuff cooked or not.

Day 2:
Set the oven to 175°C.
Drain the marrow and chop it finely. Mix with the bread mixture and the rum-soaked corinths. Use your hands to combine everything well.
Coat an ovenproof dish (about 1½ liters), preferably one with a lid, with the butter and sugar. Place the pudding mix in the dish and cover with wax paper, cut out to fit the dish. Cover with a lid or with aluminum foil.
Bake for one hour.
Remove from the oven and let the pudding rest for 30 minutes.
Remove it from the pan and place on a heat proof dish.
Heat the rum carefully and pour it over the pudding. Set on fire (be careful, of course!), and serve the pudding in flames together with a caramel sauce.


Fresh out of the oven

Caramel sauce
120 g sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
3 dl cream

Boil sugar and lemon juice, stirring constantly until you have a light brown caramel.
Add the cream, a little at the time, and boil until the caramel is dissolved.
The sauce will keep about 5 days in the fridge.


Marrow pudding flaming in the spirit of Captain Morgan ('s dark rum). Flambeing can really bring out a lot of different colors!