Baked “Cake Crumb” Mincemeat Pudding – Based on the traditional College Pudding, this pudding uses Panettone cake crumbs as part of the ingredients, as well as mincemeat, all left over from Christmas; serve with vanilla custard for a delicious & thrifty winter pudding.

A Proper Winter’s Pud!

Today’s post is all about leftovers again, as we plough through all the festive treats and ingredients that are still lurking in the fridge and the pantry! It’s another pudding, I say another pudding as we have been enjoying a lot of puddings lately, in between low-calorie and healthy meals of course. Two weeks ago I shared a wonderful family recipe for Norfolk Plough Pudding for Plough Monday, which was my paternal granny’s recipe and who was a Norfolk girl. Today’s recipe for Baked “Cake Crumb” Mincemeat Pudding is sweet however, and is also a historical recipe of sorts as it’s based on one of my favourite steamed puddings, College Pudding. Also known as New College Pudding or even Cambridge Pudding, it’s named after New College in Oxford and was a popular pudding with students in both Oxford and Cambridge university refectories.

Image: College Pudding from Old Lost Recipes Found

I have made it many times, sometimes in place of Christmas Pudding, as we all prefer a lighter style pudding here at Chez Lavender and Lovage. It appears to be borne of frugality and thrift as the pudding is basically a combination of cake crumbs (or bread crumbs) mixed with dried fruit, suet, eggs and milk. So a very useful pud for the college refectory cooks who no doubt made use of stale cake and bread crumbs. It’s a high calorific pudding and one that needs to be enjoyed after a morning’s ramble or mountain walk……or something of that ilk. There are several variations of the recipe, some are fried balls of fruity, spiced pudding mixture, whilst other recipes are the steamed pudding version that I am more familiar with. Both are served with custard or a sweet white sauce.

My recipe for Baked “Cake Crumb” Mincemeat Pudding is very similar to the whole steamed pudding variation, but instead of dried fruit and suet I’ve added mincemeat which has suet and dried fruit in it of course. I also used some leftover cake crumbs (well sweet bread crumbs to be precise) from a Christmas Panettone we still had. I made homemade vanilla custard with some single cream that I found in the back of the fridge and as I had the oven on for Sunday lunch, I decided to bake it instead of steaming it. The result was a fabulous golden outside crumb with a fluffy interior that was packed with fruit and spices…..utterly divine and perfect for a very cold and frosty January day.

I have copied two historical College Pudding recipes below, for interest; the recipes are shared on numerous websites, but these two came from the site “Foods of England”. I may try the original fried recipe next week, serving them with brandy-infused white sauce as suggested by Lotte Duncan in her recipe here: NEW COLLEGE PUDDING WITH SWEET WHITE SAUCE. I hope my cheat’s version of College Pudding inspires you to make it this winter, especially if like me you have lots of festive leftovers that need to be dealt with before you can start that New Year diet in earnest. Have a WONDERFUL Sunday, I’ll be back soon with some recipes for Burns Night, Karen

Baked “Cake Crumb” Mincemeat Pudding

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Serves	4 to 6
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	35 minutes
Total time	45 minutes
Allergy	Egg, Milk, Wheat
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Dessert
Misc	Child Friendly, Freezable, Serve Hot
Occasion	Casual Party, Christmas, Formal Party
Region	British
By author	Karen Burns-Booth

Baked "Cake Crumb" Mincemeat Pudding - Based on the traditional College Pudding, this pudding uses Panettone cake crumbs as part of the ingredients, as well as mincemeat, all left over from Christmas; serve with vanilla custard for a delicious & thrifty winter pudding.

Ingredients

• 90g (3 1/2 ozs) SR Flour
• Pinch of salt
• 90g (3 1/2 ozs) Panettone crumbs (or any cake or sweet bread crumbs of your choice such as light fruit cake or fruited tea bread)
• 2 tablespoons Demerara sugar
• 6 heaped tablespoons mincemeat (with suet or some sort of fat content)
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 6 tablespoons skimmed milk

Note

Baked "Cake Crumb" Mincemeat Pudding - Based on the traditional College Pudding, this pudding uses Panettone cake crumbs as part of the ingredients, as well as mincemeat, all left over from Christmas; serve with vanilla custard for a delicious & thrifty winter pudding.

Directions

Step 1	Grease a 600ml (1 pint) pudding bowl with some low-fat spray such as Fry Light, or grease with a little butter. Pre-heat oven to 180C/2350F/Gas mark 4.
Step 2	Sift the dry ingredients together, and the add the remaining ingredients and mix well with a spoon.
Step 3	Spoon the pudding mixture into the prepared pudding basin and bake for 30 to 35 minutes in the oven until well risen and golden brown. (A skewer when inserted into the middle of the pudding should come out clean.)
Step 4	Turn the pudding out onto a serving plate, and cut into wedges; serve with custard, cream or creme fraiche.
Step 5	Note: Can be steamed in a bain marie or a steamer; cover with grease-proof paper and tin-foil, and steam for 2 and half hours. Serve as above.

Original Receipt in ‘A Shilling Cookery for The People’ by Alexis Soyer (Soyer 1845)

382. College Pudding.- Put half a pound of crumbs into a basin, a quarter of a pound of chopped suet, the same of currants, two eggs, two ounces of sugar, a little nutmeg and salt, and a little milk; mix all together, make round balls, egg-crumb, and fry in hot fat till a nice colour; dish up with sugar over a glass of brandy or rum in it is exceedingly good.

Original Receipt in ‘English Housewifry’ by Elizabeth Moxon, 1764 (Moxon 1764)

422. To make new COLLEGE PUDDINGS.
Grate an old penny loaf, put to it a like quantity of suet shred, a nutmeg grated, a little salt and some currans, then beat some eggs in a little sack and sugar, mix all together, and knead it as stiff as for manchet, and make it up in the form and size of a turkey’s egg, but a little flatter; take a pound of butter, put it in a dish or stew-pan, and set it over a clear fire in a chafing-dish, and rub your butter about the dish till it is melted, then put your puddings in, and cover the dish, but often turn your puddings till they are brown alike, and when they are enough grate some sugar over them, and serve them up hot.
For a side-dish you must let the paste lie for a quarter of an hour before you make up your puddings.

More PUDDINGS:

Norfolk Plough Pudding for Plough Monday

Kentish Cherry Batter Pudding

Steamed Raspberry & Whisky Sponge Pudding

Scottish Vegetable & Meat Pudding

Steak and Kidney Pudding with Mushrooms