Grandma's Forgotten Recipe

I don't know when my Grandmother became Grandma.  Actually, I'm not sure why I always refer to her as my Grandmother.  We always called her Nanny so perhaps that's what I should call her from now on.

Anyway, all this talk about my Grandparents recently has led me to thinking about food, something very close to my heart as well as hers and I remembered a pudding she used to make that I haven't seen for years!

Honeycomb Mould.

I loved this pudding with it's milk custard base, light fluffy mousse and thin layer of jelly on top.

Sadly Nanny recipe hasn't just been forgotten, it's been lost.

All her recipes were written in her tiny spiky hand writing in a small blue hard backed book with a picture of flowers on the front. 

My Mum had the book for years but somehow over numerous house moved it disappeared.

I turned to the Internet for help and found that there were many recipes for this lovely pudding still out there and so yesterday I decided to give it a go myself.

For anyone interested I'll go through the recipe in 45 easy steps ...

1.  Pick your jelly mould:

Ok, so I MAY have more than the average person but I'm a COLLECTOR don't you know ...

I decide on this one I picked up at an antiques fair somewhere:

Because I'm pretty sure Nanny used a similar one

2.  Assemble your ingredients:

I like to pretend I'm organised when cooking

3.  Separate three large eggs while you bring 570ml of milk slowly to the boil adding a tbsp of vanilla extract as it heats.

4. Mix the egg yolks with 75g of sugar - you can use ordinary but I used caster sugar.

5.  When the milk is almost at boiling point pour it over the egg and sugar mixture and stir well.

6.  Return the whole thing to the saucepan and gradually bring to the boil stirring all the time.  Once it's boiled take it off the heat.  You should have a thin custard.

I would definitely recommend buying a silicone whisk if you don't have one, they are great for stirring hot stuff in nonstick pans!

7.  While the custard is cooling sprinkle 1 1/2 tbsps of geletine powder on to 2 tablespoons of cold water and leave it for a few minutes to soften.

8. Wonder vaguely why geletine powder is a kind of beige colour and watch as it immediately absorbs all of the water leaving a large amount of geletine still dry.

9.  Re-check recipe in case you have misread amount of water.  Recipe definitely says 1 /12 of geletine to 2 of water ...

10.  Poke geletine for a bit and stir cooling custard.

11. Stick your finger in custard to check temperature - it's still bloody hot!

12.  Place glass of still almost dry geletine mixture and non existent water into a pan of simmering water to melt geletine.

13.  Immediately realise your mistake when you hear a loud crack and the glass explodes.

14.  Recheck recipe which clearly says to put it in a cup not a glass!

15.  Stick your finger in the custard again (this stuff tastes GOOD!).

16.  Start geletine mixture again, this time in a cup.

17.  Watch geletine start to melt and wait for it to go from beige to absolutely clear as stated in the recipe.

18.  Look forlornly at glass for a while realising it was one of a matching pair.

19.  Notice that geletine has solidified and formed a invisible seal over the cracks and wonder if I could actually still use it.

20.  Decide I can't and chuck glass in the recycling box.

21.  Stick finger in still hot custard.

22.  Look at geletine and give it a poke with a teaspoon.

23.  Still fairly thick and still beige.

24.  Check recipe again - it definitely says it will go 'absolutely clear'.

25.  Wonder briefly if I have inadvertently picked up some kind of WHOLEMEAL geletine and does such a thing exist???

This sucker was NOT for turning!!

26. stick finger in now cooling custard a few more times and stir geletine.

27.  Whisk egg white until they are stiff but not dry.

Looks about right.

28.  Get fed up with stirring geletine and pour it into now cold custard mix anyway.

29. Fold in egg whites, it now looks like a lumpy pile of sick.

30.  Start to pour it into jelly mould and realise that jelly mould only holds 1/2ltr and you have about 1 1/2ltrs of pudding stuff.

31.  Get out supplementary bowl and pour the rest into that.

32.  Cover and stick in the fridge and wait for the pudding to work it's magic and separate into the three layer describe above.

33. Make restorative cup of coffee.

34.  Take a sip of coffee and then scream in pain as your lip sticks to the cup ripping off a strip of skin.

35,  Take another sip and repeat process.

36.  Look carefully at cup and realise that it's the same cup you used to dissolve the wholemeal geletine in and, while it stubbornly refused to turn crystal clear IN the cup there was a trail of it on the outside of the cup that was now invisible and half your bloody lip is stuck to it!

36.  Open fridge to check progress of pudding.

37.  Remove small black almost completely recovered kitten from the bottom shelf of fridge

38.  Make another coffee in a fresh cup.

39.  Check pudding again and chase away large tortoiseshell cat as she trys to grab the mince for tomorrows dinner.

40.  Wash every bowl in the house because it takes all of them to make this pudding.

41.  Check pudding again, it's starting to separate! (remove small black kitten from fridge again).

42.  Decide to leave pudding in mould in fridge overnight but ask Miss Mac if she wants to test the one in the bowl.

43.  Glare at Miss Mac when she declares that it might have been better to flavour it with lemon as per the recipe instead of with vanilla which is how I remember it tasting.

44.  Next morning confidently up end pudding over a plate.

NOTHING ....  Pudding still firmly in mould.  Shake it a bit and then decide to dip it into a bowl of hot water to loosen.

45.  Leave in hot water just a little too long and successfully turn out pudding onto plate.

When I say successfully ....

I think I melted the jelly layer  BUT, I do have a custard and a mousse layer and despite what Miss Mac says it does taste pretty good it just doesn't look like this:

So I've renamed it Honeycomb Moat!

So there you are, Grandma's forgotten recipe in 45 simple steps.

You are welcome!

And, because I'm slightly hysterical now and really don't care any more I'm going to like this post up with Anne at Domesblissity  for Thriving on Thursdays where people link up great crafting and baking ideas (this one should make them feel extra good about their stuff shouldn't it ;-)