Shine on Christmas With This Decadent Spanish Pudding

Ana Padilla Fornieles | Dec 24, 2022 4:48 pm | Add a comment | 237 reads

Okay, it’s Christmas confessional time, everybody! Raise your hand – and quickly grab a cup of eggnog – if growing up your family's Christmas dinner featured at least one recipe from…

…the gossip magazines! Oh, dear! Your aunt Mabel’s famous honey-glazed ham? Papa Jacob’s exclusive entrée? Bet my bottom RMB they came from the lifestyle section of one of those glossy rags devoted to assorted celebs, their lives and their, ahem…bedroom endeavours.

Quite honestly, though, who cares! It’s not that fusion cuisine doesn’t have a time and a place — I’m just saying it’s most likely not Christmas Eve dinner. Ask the chef! Also, who says these are not your family recipes? Someone who loved you brought them every year much to the delight of a table of diners bonded by that wealth of beautiful, often messy things that make up the concept of family, whatever that may look like for you.

So, without further ado, this is the recipe for Spanish Caramel Apple Pudding, aka my mom’s Christmas Pudding.

It’s Spanish because she found the recipe in a Spanish gossip magazine — God only knows when — and because my family and I, who are Spaniards, have it every Christmas in Spain. It’s a family recipe because it brings back a ton of seasonal memories.

The kind of memories that will make you grin and then probably also shed some tears, you know?

I’m sure you do.

Let’s keep it jolly, though! You can’t be blue with a recipe this good. They’re gonna kiss you under the mistletoe. Oh, and it’s so easy and inexpensive. Don’t trust the crowds: Christmas and stress don’t go well together.

SPANISH CARAMEL APPLE PUDDING

Cooking Time: 50 minutes
Servings: 6

•   2 apples (or 3, if they’re small)
•   6 crisp ladyfinger cookies, crushed (mom says you may sub for any soft bun or even day-before bread)
•   2 eggs
•   500 ml milk
•   20 grams unsalted butter
•   4 tbsp white granulated sugar;
•   Liquid caramel (any similar syrup should do)
•   1 tsp vanilla extract (better if pure but imitation’s okay) and/or ground cinnamon (optional but why would you skimp on goodness?)

Wash and peel the apples, cut them into smallish pieces, and toss them in a saucepan with butter and one tablespoon of sugar. I probably don’t need to remind you that you want a medium-low flame, right? Right.

Crack the eggs into a large, deep bowl and whisk them with the cinnamon, vanilla extract, and remaining sugar.

Add the milk, diced apples, and ladyfinger cookies that you’ll have crushed into small pieces with your very own hands and mix.

You may try to use a stand mixer. If you find it spills over, switch to a regular spatula. This isn’t advanced patisserie, so nothing to lose.

Coat the insides of a pudding mold with liquid caramel and for the love of everything, don’t be a Scrooge with that syrup.

Pour the dough into the mold and place it on an oven-safe baking dish that's filled with a couple of inches of hot water – this is a method known as a bain-marie.

You’re gonna take that dish to the oven and bake the pudding for 50 minutes at 180ºC.