Sometimes it just doesn't work -

I made a steamed pudding today.   I used a recipe from the 1832 edition of Cooks Own Book.  I've had great results with every recipe I've tried from this book, so had high hopes for this one.  I had suet in the freezer and all the ingredients on hand.   I did have to make the bread crumbs myself this morning, but the rest were simple.

Fruit Suet Pudding

250g flour

125g bread crumbs

125g minced suet

6g ground ginger

 100g dried currents

4g salt

3/4c milk

The recipe was pretty straight forward.   Mix everything together, pop into a pudding bag and boil for 2 hours.   I used a pudding mould, as I didn't have a pudding bag or cloth, or even any muslin on hand.

 After steaming, the pudding popped out of the mould beautifully.  I was thrilled until the puddles of melted suet also poured out.  Ick.

The whole pudding was saturated with fat.  Touching it left a greasy mess on my fingers.  The small bite that I ate, tasted heavily of fat and currents.  The fat overwhelmed even the flavour of the ginger.   It left my lips soft though, not needing lip balm, despite today's cool windy weather.

A simple slice was as unappetizing to look at as it was to eat.  The fat glistened on it.  It literally dripped.  I was amazed it held together too.

I don't have enough experience with steamed puddings to know what I did wrong.   I'm wondering if maybe my bread crumbs were not dry enough, as I did make them that morning.  I'd not had time to leave them to get completely stale, so partially dried them in the oven before grinding.  I weighed everything for accuracy, but I may have done something wrong there.  At any rate, the pudding was inedible by humans.  

 The chooks loved it though!