Brandy and Cola Malva Pudding

Brandy & Cola Malva Pudding

The best just got better. My original malva potjie recipe is based on the very originally penned malva recipe, but with a new sauce. A real malva pudding is a two-fold affair. You bake a sponge-like cake and this is dressed with a caramel-like sauce shortly before serving. Said sauce is not as thick as that of a sticky toffee pudding so the sauce is sucked up by the cake part, the upshot being a wonderful end result that we all came to love. What we’re doing in this recipe is cutting the sugar and water ingredients from the original sauce and adding a cup of cola that obviously contains sugar and water. It also contains caramel notes, which really is the plan here. The cream stays and lastly I add brandy to the sauce, because where there’s a fire, a braai and cola there should obviously be brandy.

WHAT YOU NEED

(Feeds 6)

For the batter

1 cup flour
½ tot bicarbonate of
soda
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tot apricot jam
1 tot vinegar
1 tot melted butter
1 cup milk

For the Sauce

1 cup cream
1 cup cola
2 tots brandy
125 g butter

To Serve

Vanilla ice cream, fresh cream or custard

WHAT TO DO

Light the fire. You need fewer coals than when braaing steak, but you’ll need a steady supply of coals once the pudding is baking. Now use butter to grease your no. 10 flat-bottomed baking potjie.
Make the batter: Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and sugar in a bowl.
In another mixing bowl, whisk the egg very well. Now add the jam, vinegar, melted butter and milk, whisking well after adding each ingredient.
Add the wet ingredients of step 3 to the dry ingredients of step 2 and mix well.
Pour the batter into the potjie, put the lid on and bake for 50 minutes by placing some coals underneath the potjie and some coals on top of the lid. Don’t add too much heat, as burning is a big danger. There is no particular risk in having too little heat and taking up to 1 hour to get the baking done, so rather go too slow than too fast. During this time, you can add a few fresh hot coals to the bottom and top of the potjie whenever you feel the pudding is losing steam.
When the pudding has been baking for about 40 minutes (about 10 minutes before it’s done), heat all the sauce ingredients in a small potjie over medium coals. Keep stirring to ensure that the butter is melted. You want the sauce piping hot but not boiling over.
After about 50 minutes of baking, insert a skewer into the middle of the pudding to test whether it’s done. If the skewer comes out clean, it’s ready.
Take the pudding off the fire and pour the sauce evenly over it. Believe me, it will absorb all the sauce – you just need to leave it standing for a few minutes. Serve the malva pudding warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, a dollop of fresh cream or a puddle of vanilla custard. A good way to keep it hot is to put it near the fire, but not too close – after doing everything right, we don’t want it to burn now.