So, you know I’ve been on a “Work With What You Got” kick for October at The Kale Chronicles. You know that I have been eating rye flakes, rolled oats and granola cooked with dried apples and milk, and then with Tropical Traditions Coconut Oil and peanut butter: when we ran out of peanut butter I substituted cashew butter and somehow breakfast keeps rolling along. So does dinner: Mom bought some black cod at Trader Joe’s on Wednesday and with Johnny coming over for dinner on Friday night (Yay!) I prepared the fish by baking it in a foil packet (similar to the baked salmon I made here) with roasted red bell peppers and kalamata olives from jars, fresh basil from the basil plant on the breakfast room table and a squeeze of Meyer lemon from our front yard tree. I made another round of my version of Shira’s Brussels sprout salad with toasted hazelnuts and dried cranberries, put some red potatoes in the oven to bake with the fish and spent some time in the kitchen with my mother concocting a family favorite dessert, a baked lemon pudding.
The lemon pudding began, as things often do at our house, with substitutions: the classic recipe, culled from an index card in one of my mother’s recipe files calls for Wheaties (“Breakfast of Champions”) cereal in the topping. Mom’s search of our high storage cupboards revealed that the orange boxes she thought contained Wheaties were in fact Bran Flakes. Oh. She decided to combine Bran Flakes and Corn Flakes to approximate the missing Wheaties.
I went out to the yard to gather lemons from the tree, bringing in four of the ripest ones I could reach. I asked Mom about quantity. She said, “The recipe calls for the juice of two lemons, but these are bland — maybe add an extra one.”
I zested and juiced three lemons, squeezing each half through my hand. This resulted in just a quarter-cup of juice.
“That’s only a quarter-cup,” I said.
“Maybe do the other one,” she replied.
I juiced the fourth lemon, but did not zest it, mainly because I had absentmindedly cut it in half to squeeze instead of picking up the microplane. Life is imperfect and I one of its imperfect creatures.
I reminded Mom that the topping for this pudding is usually tooth-ache-ingly sweet. I was working on the lemon filling while she worked on the topping and we agreed to scant the sugar in our respective parts. She reduced the brown sugar in the recipe that doubles for crust and topping and I scanted the 3/4 cup white sugar in the filling. The result of the combined sugar reduction was a more delicious pudding than usual, which we ate with the leftover sweetened mascarpone from last week’s strawberry shortcake. I present to you the modified recipe with additional observations in the Food Notes.
Homey Lemon Pudding
For lemon filling:
Juice and zest 2 ordinary Eureka lemons or 4 Meyer lemons. Set aside.
Place in saucepan:
Scant 3/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp flour
1/8 tsp kosher salt
Stir in gradually:
1 cup very hot water
Bring sugar-flour-water mixture to boil over direct heat, stirring constantly for ten minutes.
Remove from heat.
Beat 2 eggs until smooth.
Temper the eggs by drizzling a little of the liquid into the eggs and whisking with a fork. Drizzle a little more liquid and whisk again. Repeat two or three more times until the eggs are perceptively warm before adding the eggs to the filling and whisking to combine. Tempering the eggs prevents having bits of cooked eggs in your lemon filling.
Add reserved lemon juice and zest to filling and stir to combine. Let filling cool while you make the topping (which also serves as the pudding’s base). At this time, also preheat your oven to 325.
In a mixing bowl combine:
1 cup flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt (unless using salted butter)
Cut in 1/3 cup shortening (Mom uses part margarine and part unsalted butter)
Add:
3/4 cup lightly crushed Corn Flakes
3/4 cup lightly crushed Bran Flakes (OR 1 cup Wheaties*)
1/2 cup shredded coconut
Press 2/3 of brown sugar mixture into the bottom of a square pan.
Pour cooled lemon filling over topping
Top with remaining 1/3 topping.
Bake for 40 minutes.
Serve with barely sweetened whipped cream (creme chantilly) or sweetened whipped mascarpone. If you use Cool Whip or whipped nonfat dried milk I don’t want to hear about it, although I am not in your kitchens to supervise what you do.
Food Notes: If you have Wheaties on hand you only need a cup of them: they are thicker and crunchier than the other cereals we substituted here. On the other hand, the recipe was formulated for “old Wheaties,” which had less sugar than the current product, so substituting Corn Flakes and Bran Flakes may more closely resemble the original recipe. Bran Flakes on their own lack the necessary crunch, which is why Mom opted to mix them with Corn Flakes here. If you use salted butter in the topping you can skip the pinch of salt — it will provide all of the salt you need. Mom uses commercial sweetened shredded coconut — you can use unsweetened if you like: the topping ingredients provide plenty of sugar! We like tart lemon fillings — if you like yours sweeter either don’t scant the sugar in the filling or use one fewer lemon than we did.
Johnny and I liked the pudding so much that we had another square apiece after breakfasting on scrambled eggs with roasted peppers and cheddar cheese and sourdough toast on Saturday morning…
Haha I’m pretty lax with my cooking as well changing as I go along – no harm in it at all and often with results more suited to taste 🙂
This pudding sounds totally refreshing and delicious!
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Thank you, CCU. We love lemon desserts here. And my mother is a fiend for brown sugar and coconut in sweets.
Lemony fresh pudding… sounds delicious. I think it might be a crime to use cool whip…LOL just saying. Take care, BAM
Thanks, BAM — it’s a crime in my book: real food, real ingredients.
I’m going to carry the words “honey lemon pudding” with me all day – sounds divine! Love the artwork for this post…
It’s “homey” or “homely,” Movita — there’s no honey involved: homey, as in not fancy (plus Mom thinks it is too ugly for company — too much brown). Thanks about the painting.
Another winner in my book. Love lemon.
Thank you, Jane. Hope things are going well with you.
Oh! Yummy! I just starting adventuring into the world of puddings last month with persimmon…perhaps I will have to try this!
Thank you, Shelly — I hope you enjoy it.
Oh this sounds fine! I rarely meet anything to do with lemons that I *don’t* like – but this makes me happy just reading about it! Mmmm…
Glad to make you happy, Rachel — I love all things lemon, too.
I will have to make this but with agave nectar instead!
You will have to make some adjustments if you use agave nectar because the recipe calls for both white and brown sugar, which are dry ingredients rather than liquid ones. You will probably have to increase the flour considerably if you use a liquid sweetener.
I love how you and your mum work together like that… this was a beautiful story… and the recipe in my humble opinion was a bonus to you two glorious women and your ability to work together.. Sometimes i really wish my mum had gotten to grow old.. ah well.. there you are.. if wishes were horses and all that!
Thank you, Celi, for reminding me how lucky I am to be able to cook with my mother still — sometimes we cooperate, such as on Thanksgiving Day, and other times we snap at each other: a frequent source of conflict is when I plan to re-use something (bowl, spoon, measuring cup) and she whisks it away to wash it!
You’ve really inspired me, Sharyn.. that’s one of the reasons I added what was in my fridge to the soup last night! I am so impressed that you’d have company and still keep within the “rules” of not purchasing! This sounds like a fantastic meal and dessert!
Barbara, when you have no money to spare, things suddenly get a lot simpler: company comes and you make the best meal you can without spending extra. We eat well around here because we buy good ingredients and we have honed our cooking skills for about 110 years between us! I’m glad to have inspired you.
I just noticed my neighbor’s overhanging lemon tree is starting to produce some beauties! I think the cereal combinations sound like an unlikely combination, but I’ve come to know that your substitutions really work! Good job with this one, Sharyn. You really could publish a cookbook of all your truly “from the pantry” recipes! 🙂
Thank you, Debra. I was a little worried about the Corn Flakes myself, but the pudding was delicious.
My neighbor just brought me a bag of Meyer’s lemons. This would be perfect. I have been doing the same thing as far as using what I have. It’s kind of a creative cooking challenge to not fly to the store for something new to add.
Good for you, Susan. I hope to start reading about your dishes soon.
I cannot help but be jealous of your lemon tree in your backyard and what an amazing recipe to help usher in these gloomy, rainy and cold days we’ve been experiencing in the north.
Thanks, Eva. Our weather is still swinging between rain and sun, often both things in one day. Every meal we have to figure out whether we need cold food to cool off or hot food to get warm again.
Picking lemons in your backyard – ah you live in paradise – I buy them, 2 for a dollar and squeeze them on my fish. Limes from Mexico are 33 cents each here and I squeeze them on my tequila – $30 a bottle. But I get my flu shots free – Oh Canada…
Well, John, I think I would take national health care over lemons in the front yard if we could have a decent national health plan, but I’ve heard its tough to immigrate to Canada now and I’m in love with another American citizen. Two for a dollar is not such a bad price for lemons, although free is better!
I love reading your wonderfully evocative descriptions of your cooking processes; I’ve said this before but I always feel like I’m standing beside you in your kitchen, and I can almost smell and taste your food.
Thank you, Susan.
“If you use Cool Whip…” – yuck, I’ve heard of this stuff… I’ve no idea what it’s like but it sounds revolting. Thankfully I can hopefully go my whole life without having to try it (sadly I have already tried Twinkies and immediately regretted my decision to do so!). Love the sound of the pudding. Anything with lemon is always a winner for me – love the stuff!
I, too, love anything containing lemon, sweet or savory.