Extermination, Procrastination and Chocolate Pudding
Okay, I admit defeat. This is a rare moment, people. I am generally acknowledged as a tenacious, goal-driven, resourceful and indeed bloody-minded woman and I REALLY hate to lose. But the god-awful blue chunky cardigan has defeated me. It eats yarn. 7 balls out of 10 knit up into the shoulders, sleeves to elbow length and body to just-under-the-boobs. And it wasn’t even a large size! It was chunky wool on US6 Denise needles in mind-bogglingly boring stockingette and, after an unwise number of Sav Blancs I bit the bullet and yanked out the needles. I killed it. And I can’t say I’m sorry. Let’s think of it as euthanasia; putting me out of my misery.
On the bright side, this means that I have finished knitting everything that is actually ON the needles! (We are deliberately ignoring the plaintive nagging of the pink cardi who will remain trimless until I can face grafting and decision making. That calls for more potent Dutch courage than a mere chilled white).
And when I have empty needles I have a new project opportunity! Yippee!
Now, if you’ve been reading any of my previous posts you would realize that this leaves us with a little problem. For those of you passing by or looking for a chocolate pudding recipe (have patience, it’s coming) I’ll explain that I have a teensy problem choosing between one thing and another. So, in an effort to be more decisive, I’m making a unilateral decision – I’m going to let someone else decide.
The most obvious thing to do was to get out my sock yarn (from Sophie’s Toes on Etsy, I love this yarn, it is gloriously coloured and beautifully soft. I don’t know how she gets so many colours in there.) Then I dragged my three children in and asked them which one they liked the best:
You see my problem? Which would you knit next? Send me your opinions quickly, before I’m tempted to buy something else because I can’t make up my mind! I went a little mad this weekend and bought myself a second spinning wheel and I’m now on a yarn diet (although being drip fed by Posh Yarn’s sock club).
Just to add insult to injury, I’m on a real diet too. So, in the manner of irrational chocolate-deprived hormonal creatures everywhere, I gave myself a little send off:
It is a well known fact (known to me, that is) that you have to empty the house of everything fattening before the start of your diet. Some call it sabotage, some call it insane. I call it common sense. I can’t eat it next week so I’ll have to eat it now.
Lurking in my freezer was a bag of chocolate cake. Now normally chocolate cake doesn’t make it as far as the freezer. In our house chocolate cake would be lucky to make it as far as the cake tin. (Don’t look at me like that, I have help eating it!) This particular bag of cake was the trimmings from a gargantuan double layer chocolate cream cake I made for a family party. The two cakes rose wonderfully, peaked and gorgeous, but it was completely impossible to sandwich them together without the entire confection rolling off the plate and onto the floor (this would not have prevented our eating them). I had to trim off their domes to make flat discs. The scraps, valiantly defended by yours truly, escaped the ravening hordes and were zip-locked into the freezer where they have been getting in my way ever since.
I have a cookery book which was a reference book when I studied Home Economics back in High School. It contains all sorts of recipes which seen antiquarian when compared to the Jamie Oliver type concoctions common today. Suet pastry and chutneys, steamed puddings and ragout, they are all in my tatty old book. Well, I remembered a recipe called cabinet pudding which is made with sponge cake crumbs. With a little tweaking, it went like this:
Chocolate Pud
2 eggs
1 cup milk (250ml)
2 heaped tablespoons sugar
a teaspoon of vanilla essence (or any flavouring that rings your bell)
2-3 cups (or a few handfuls) of cake. Stale sponge cakes are perfect. If your cakes never get the chance to get stale then the dry un-swallowable cake that somebody else baked will do nicely!
Put all the ingredients into a blender. Whizz till you can’t see any lumps. Grease a dish it will fit into. Cover with greaseproof paper and wrap the whole thing in foil (or use a steamed pudding basin with a very well fitting lid). You don’t want the moisture from the steam getting in there or you’ll have chocolate soup.
Steam (any way you like – I use a steamer but putting it in the bottom of a slow cooker, bain marie or a large saucepan with an inch or two of water will do nicely) cook for 1 hour. Keep warm. Serve.
The pudding will be set more around the outside of the dish and creamier in the middle. This would be fabulous made the traditional way with plain (ie not chocolate) sponge and some fruit in the bottom of the dish or even jam. You could also bake it but it would have to be on low heat - then it would be more like a bread and butter pudding, I suppose.
The leftovers were fabulous the next day. So I’m told. I didn’t get any. I’m on a diet.
