The Pud'n Adventure

A cooking story with illustrations.

So, I've made brownies from scratch. Pie with homemade crusts. Cake with with this greasy, plastic-looking icing. And, after putting together a quite masculine and tasty bread pudding, I was beginning to wonder about the more exotic desserts in my wife's cookbook (Betty Crocker, circa 1970).

It was at this time that I stumbled across a recipe called "Steamed Molasses Pudding."

Hmmm ... "Steamed MOE-lasses Pudding. Sounds very interesting and Marlboro-Man like. And the sauce calls for whiskey."

I already had the ingredients, except for the whiskey, a situation I rectified by buying about 200 times more than the teaspoon the recipe calls for.

Things ground to a halt when the instructions told me to "pour batter into a four-cup mold." Never heard of a four-cup mold. I imagined it had something to do with jello, but that didn't make sense.

So I went to Linens n things. Bed Bath and Beyond. Williams and Sonoma. The gun section of Academy Sporting Goods. Nothing. No one knew what I was talking about. I was becoming obsessed, in a way that has nothing to do with the displaced mania of being three months away from baby time and having no idea what's gonna happen with the job situation.

What was Betty Crocker thinking (circa 1970)?

I finally turned to E-Bay and found out that, while four-cup pudding molds were all the rage in the 1970s, they aren't dominating the marketplace today. I stumbled across one while in an antique shop. Here's what a four-cup mold looks like (circa 1970):

I bought it, with a full feeling of relief. It was at this point that my wife noted it looked like it was fully made of copper, that copper corrodes in water and that there was "No way I'm going to put metal into my bloodstream ... NO," she said, while looking into the pantry.

Or maybe not, but I had this picture.

Back to the search. I finally gave in and googled it. It led me here.

I went to the link for King Arthur flour. It's my favorite as the package has a knight brandishing a sword. The product was described:

Pudding Mold - Quart
For moist, rich, old-fashioned desserts and bread

• Holds 1 quart (4 cups) batter

Bingo. Didn't have a picture, so I took a leap of faith and ordered. (Total cost $15 or so.)

One week later, the little package of steamed joy arrived:

Though the package wasn't that little. Here's the box it came from.

They had room to smuggle a couple of sheep dog puppies in there.

Not to go too far into the technical details: I proceeded to make the batter, put it in the mold, and boil it. Here's the final result.


Tasty. Next time I probably won't go with molasses. The sauce, however, is pretty good by itself.