Donna Hay's Lemon Puddings (blur-pic-heavy and irritatedness-heavy :P)

so the Old Man has gone fishing and very nicely taken the car with him, which has rendered me immobile and lifeless. i decided to finally try making what i had always thought to be"fail-proof" lemon puddings.

(typing while watching Spirits of Love on Astro ch 301, and no subtitles again~!! argh)

i first came upon this recipe in one of my cooking guru, Donna Hay's books, i think it was 'off the shelf'. it's crazy-easy to make, just dump all the ingredients in a blender, pour and bake. this time though, i didn't have any paper muffin cups so i decided to make a Marie-biscuit crust, like a cheesecake crust.

i got the biscuits for RM2.50 from the opposite shop. it was 300gms and i used it all, which i really shouldn't have, it was way too much. my blender is super-retro as you can see so it didn't do a great job of blending at the sides.

so i improvised and used a plastic strainer to sieve the blended biscuits into a bowl as i didn't have (read:lazy to look for:D). it worked pretty well, the result was like fine sand. so far so good right? :D

i did NOT remember this recipe needing absolutely COPIOUS amounts of butter however. the concept is to mix the blended biscuits with butter to create a crumbly dough, which you can then press into a crust.

i think i added about 7 heaping tablespoons of Golden Churn butter, which is the best you can get really, and suddenly realised that i was running out of butter and the puddings itself required at least 90g! so i switched to this instead:

my family at one time was on the margarine side of the butter-vs-margarine debate and my sister has been hooked on it ever since. however, if you taste Golden Churn and then have this, this will completely taste like plastic :S

i was using 2 bowls and mixing like mad and it took me freaking AGES to come up with the consistency i wanted. i finally realised my mistake was in melting the butter, i think you get a better result with softened butter, and you don't even have to use as much as i did! ah, well, it's been more than a year, i'm rusty what can i say :D

so the whole idea was to make mini shells by pressing the dough into the bottom and the sides of the individual cups in the muffin pan. the whole process was DAMN messy, crumbs everywhere.

i highly appreciate the work of food bloggers who photograph every single step they make now, unless they have someone helping them to take the photos, it's no easy task! you're so eager to move on to the next step but you have to stop, wash your hands, get the camera ready with the correct focus and lighting and angle and evrything! as you can tell i got fed up halfway and simply snapped away :D

a close-up of the shell, it took me like half an hour or more to make these. i started by pressing the bottom first but found it was much easier to start with the sides.

put about 2 teaspoons of the dough in the cup (remember to butter it first) and make a small hole in the middle so the dough is about evenly divided all around. then press it up against the sides with the back of the teaspoon, using your index finger to pat the tops straight. any excess will just fall into the middle.

then add another level teaspoon of dough for the base and pat flat with your finger (which of course has been appropriately Dettol-ed beforehand ;)) use the spoon to smooth out the sides.

see. told you i was messy! oven was preheated to 180C, and this went in for about 5 minutes. MISTAKE! will tell you why later.

now for the filling. 7 ingredients which you just measure out and blend! 90g of softened butter, but of course i only had about 2 tablespoons of that left and had to compensate for the rest with the Olive Grove spread.

Gourmet Sleuth has a great conversion tool that allows you to convert any kind of food to various measurements. i couldn't be bothered with weighing out the butter so i used this to figure out how many tablespoons of butter i would need.

the recipe also called for 1 and 1/2 cups of caster sugar but i only put in a little more than 1 cup because Western people eat like diabetes doesn't exist in this world. besides, it was all the sugar that was left in the box :D

after that went in 1 and 1/2 cups of milk, 1/2 cup of plain flour and 1 teaspoon baking powder. FYI, plain flour and all-purpose flour are the same thing and is made from wheat. baking powder and baking soda are NOT the same thing, i'm not sure how to tell you why but i do know that if you need baking powder and you only have baking soda, you can just add two parts cream of tartar to one part baking soda to make baking powder.

next, 1/2 cup lemon juice. i used my again retro juicer for this and i find it works amazingly well, when you remove the citrus half after twisting like anything, it's alll dry inside. a tip i learnt somewhere is to roll the fruit before you cut it to squeeze, that way all the pulp is broken up inside and the juice will be released easily.

so i had a moment of panic when i was on my second to last lemon and i realised the cup was only this full! and i only had this left!

as expected it barely helped and i took the other discarded lemons in the sink and squeezed them to hell with my hands. i finally managed to get this:

oh well. good enough. NEXT!

so the whole thing got blended quite a bit and ended up in this delightful frothy mass. don't worry if it's too liquid-y, the flour and baking powder will help to solidify it.

as usual there was a lot , which is a good thing as i will bake some more fresh ones for Diehard when he comes over, and i can get to change the ingredients a bit too maybe.

the DAMN oven bell wasn't loud enough for me to hear, or perhaps i was too kanchiong over my lemon juice but it came out looking like this! i don't think it looks as bad in the photo as it did in real life, it was seriously leaning towards chocolate man. after i took it out, i realised i would have to bake it again with the filling for 20 minutes at least. i think it would be better for me to chill it then bake together with the filling next time. sigh. nevermind. moving on!

yes yes. i'm a messy baker. i will never be hired in Taka. again, don't freak if you think it's too watery, it's pudding, not cake!

in the over for 20-25 minutes at 180C....
and puffing up at the 20th minute! i didn't want to make the same mistake so i sat outside for the last 5 minutes listening to songs on my phone. of course i had to go come up with some brilliant idea of turning on the grill to 'brown' the tops of my puddings. and of course it went overboard and produced this:

oh kill me. i hate cooking at home. i'm not used to the kitchen. the oven sucks.

excuses excuses :D

close-up of the nicest-looking (read: unburnt) one :D

so i thought since the crusts are all burnt i'll just scrape them off and we'll be left with lovely lemon-y puddings. right?

er...right?

seeee....told you they would firm up. i only took off the sides for this only only, the rest i left on. cause yeah, i was too lazy ok!

verdict? not lemon-y enough for me, probably cause of the lack of lemon juice and also that the lemons themselves had been in the fridge for ages! also REAL butter would have been better, and i think i added a bit too much flour and not enough sugar. well, i'm the only one to have had them so far, so we will see what other people say. but the first time i made them in Koko's house, everyone liked them! and my family is very picky.

better luck next time!

hmm. making this reminds me of stealing lemons. sigh.