Category: Travel

During a summer break in the Peak District, we visited Bakewell. As a fan of Bakewell tart, we were curious to try Bakewell pudding. Well it’s naughty, but V nice, and indeed preferable over a Tart. We had the fortune of visiting Bakewell again during the same break and bought another!

There are a few shops and bakeries selling the tarts and puddings, and the one we visited, The Bakewell Pudding Parlour, posts them too. So I ordered one for Christmas.

I have since ‘googled it’ to find the recipe, which is often cited as being a well kept secret, until I came across a ‘The history of Bakewell Pudding, and how to make one’ by Charlotte Morgan, over at lovefood.com.

Reading it through I warmed to the comment at the bottom of the page by Tracey015 who refered to a recipe in a Darbyshire cook book.

I’m no baker, but gave her recipe a go.  It came out pretty close indeed.  I’ve since made some more, adding ground almond too, to give the pudding a wee bit more texture.

Here’s the recipe I follow (at the moment), and one that returns a right treat, pretty much exactly how we remember it from our holiday.

Ingredients

• 1 ready roll of puff pastry – I cheat!
• 5 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 4oz butter 6oz castor sugar
• 1oz ground almonds
• strawberry jam – no bits – one standard jar is more than enough, unless you like a lot of jam! 
• 4 teaspoons of almond essence

Method

• Melt butter and sugar.  Lightly beat egg whites. Mix the melted butter, sugar, egg whites, yolks and almond essence together.
• Next line a cake tin with the pastry.  I use an 8inch tin – whatever you have that the puff pastry roll will fit.
• Spoon the jam on the pastry, a generous layer.
• Pour the mixture carefully (so as not to disturb the jam) over the jam and fill the tin.
• Pop it in the oven @ 220 deg C for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180 deg C for 25 minutes.
• Once cooked, allow to cool with oven door ajar, to allow it to cool slowly.
• Then enjoy it with custard, ice cream, or my favourite, evaporated milk! YUM!!

I even had enough pastry and mixture left over to make a wee star shaped pudding for 2 🙂

This was an earlier attempt, trying to replicate the star shape we had from the Pudding Parlour.  Whilst it tasted good, the ready roll pastry was no match for the size of mould.  I ended up re rolling the pastry, so it didn’t ‘puff up’ and I had to patch it up at the extreme edges.