Merry Christmas!
The Snook and I were debating accompanying the photobloggers on their trip to the Zoo yesterday, but late Christmas Eve we realised we were having an HRE (“ham-related emergency”). (The emergency being the shocking lack of it in our diet.) So we spent most of Christmas Day relaxing at home and tending to a massive five-pound ham. We followed Nigella’s recipe, which entails braising the pork in Coca-Cola for 2.5 hours, then applying glaze and blasting it in the oven for a few minutes. It was delicious. We also had mashed potatoes (with truffle), glazed carrots, and steamed broccoli. For dessert, I went with another recipe from my 1965 CWA Cookbook. This time I tried “Delicious Pudding” (December 2), or “Lemon Delicious” as it’s more commonly called nowadays. Unfortunately this one wasn’t quite such a success…
  
I followed the pudding recipe to the letter, but the thing just WOULD NOT SET. I pulled it out of the oven after the prescribed half hour, and it was just milk soup. So I put it back in. It was well after an hour before it started to thicken at all. I’ve since done some research online, and all the similar recipes I can find (like this one) use slightly less milk – and sometimes more egg – and recommend baking for longer. So if I make it again, I’ll probably make some adjustments. Here’s the original recipe…
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 heaped tablespoon flour, 1 1/4 cups milk, 1 lemon (juice and rind), 2 eggs, pinch salt. Beat butter and sugar to a cream, add lemon juice and grated rind, yolks of eggs, flour, and the 1 1/4 cups of milk, lastly add the well-whipped whites of eggs. Mix lightly together and bake in a pan of water in a slow oven 1/2 an hour. When doubling this recipe add only 2 cups of milk, not 2 1/2.
Hey, I just realised that the pinch of salt never gets used! What the heck was it for? Was I supposed to use it when whipping the egg whites? Because I didn’t. As for the “slow” oven, both Rodd and his Mom felt that it was around the 150°C mark, but I think I could go a little higher next time. I also might try incorporating the egg whites a little bit more; I wasn’t sure whether I should have floating islands or a total incorporated custard. The taste was pretty good, albeit incredibly rich. I think I might cut the sugar a bit next time, or else serve only a tiny bit to each person!
6 responses
I love lemon delicious or lemon sponge pudding as it’s sometimes known). My recipe only uses 3/4 cup of milk and 1/4 cup of lemon juice; also 1/4 cup of flour. This might make the difference. I don’t incorporate the whites too much; there should be a kind of spongy top with a sauce layer below Definitely not higher than 150C – this is a custard and needs to cook slowly. Try again and let us know how it goes.
Sorry – I’ve just checked and my recipe says to bake it for one hour @ 180 or 40 mins @ 190. So that might help too.
I think you’ll find that ‘Lemom Delicious’ features more than once in that book and if I remember, the ingredients vary slightly each time. You’ll probably find you need to cut back on the sugar in all of the recipes.I think our palate has changed in recent years and all those old recipes are VERY sweet.
Have fun,there are some weird and wonderful things for you to discover.You’re having an Australian ’50s experience every time you make one of those desserts! My mum dished those things up to us everynight, except for when we had icecream with flavouring. Homemade icecream using Carnation milk was dreadful but the Streets icecream in the cardboard ‘zippered’ box was a real treat.
i have a great lemon delicious recipe and the one out of Stephanie Alexander never fails…
That ham looks amazing
*hmph*
I *HATE* YOU
I *HATE* NIGELLA
I *HATE* COCA-COLA GLAZE
AND I *HATE*… (not having any)
Lemon Delicious is my absolute all-time fave dessert! My Nana used to make it for us, and I’ve even ended up with her “special” lemon delicious pudding bowl (black with lemon-coloured insides – very spesh!) M-H’s comment about not incorporating the egg whites too much is what I was going to suggest, but also the ingredients for my recipe (PMWU) are: 1 cup sugar, 1 tbspn butter, 2 tbspns SR flour, juice and rind of 1 lemon, 1 cup milk and 2 eggs. Instructions are pretty much word for word the same as your recipe. My experiences have been good and bad, with no explanation as to why?! good luck with the next one 😉