The recipes published daily this week reflect my personal and subjective choice of (with due humility) the best recipes I have produced in 2022. On Friday, we will publish a People’s Choice Top 10 based on the number of users of the most-read and clicked recipes in the Daily Maverick TGIFood section this year. That list, as you will see, is quite different, though there is some overlapping. Let’s say these are the ones I’m proudest of… 

I was inventive with malva pudding again when I made this pudding, after my earlier Dark Malva Pudding, which gets its deeper hue from the use of muscovado sugar. This time, it was all about brandy and orange, and I finished it off with fresh blueberries which are steeped in the brandy-orange sauce before serving.

There are three steps to the cook: the pudding itself, the sauce, and a brandy custard. 

Ingredients

For the malva pudding:

2 cups cake flour

2 Tbsp bicarbonate of soda

400 ml granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

3 Tbsp apricot jam

2 Tbsp butter, melted

375 ml milk

zest of 1 orange

1 Tbsp brandy

For the brandy-orange sauce:

⅔ cup cream

⅔ cup full cream milk

⅔ cup granulated white sugar

200 g butter

½ cup orange juice

2 Tbsp brandy

For serving:

1 cup blueberries to add to the sauce and steep before serving

For the brandy custard:

2 cups / 500 ml milk

180 ml cream

4 egg yolks

125 ml castor sugar

2 tsp cornflour

60 ml brandy

1 tsp vanilla essence

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C. 

Butter a deep oven dish.

Sift the flour and bicarb into a bowl, add the sugar and stir.

Put the eggs, jam, red wine vinegar, orange zest, brandy, melted butter and milk in a separate bowl and beat well. Add this mixture to the first bowl and beat until combined.

Grease one side of a sheet of foil big enough to cover your dish. Pour the mixture into the dish and cover with the foil.

Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes.

For the sauce, combine all the ingredients in a pot on a low heat and stir while the sugar dissolves; be sure that it is completely dissolved; this will take at least five minutes. Add the blueberries and let it simmer very gently for three to four minutes.

For the brandy custard, heat the milk and cream in a pot until it simmers, then turn off the heat.

Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour together in a bowl and gradually whisk it into the dairy mixture.

On a very low heat, stir constantly with a wooden spoon while the custard thickens and coats the back of a spoon. It must not boil. Pour it into a jug, stir in the brandy and vanilla essence and cover with cling wrap or foil. Note: this is not a very thick custard like those you buy in cartons; more like a French-style Anglaise.

When the pudding is cooked, remove it from the oven and prick holes in it with a skewer. Pour the brandy-orange sauce over the pudding and let it ooze in everywhere. Serve with the custard. DM/TGIFood

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Champion 2021. His book, foodSTUFF, is available in the DM Shop. Buy it here. 

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