Lemon delicious

To continue the theme of my last post, I’ve found another pudding that’s not common, but is definitely a crowd-pleaser. While it belongs to an earlier generation than mine, I’ve noticed lemon delicious is making its way back into the cookbooks recently. It’s one of those Australian recipes handed down through families over the years, so I’d say there’s quite a few version of it out there. A few weeks ago, I sat through an in-depth discussion between my grandma-in-law and an aunt-in-law as they debated whether or not you should strain the pulp from the lemon juice (I’d love to give you a run-down of both sides of that argument, but I was too busy stuffing my face to pay close attention).

If you have no idea what lemon delicious is, imagine a light lemon sponge floating over a creamy lemon sauce, and pure heaven where the two meet.

Now, the word on the street (okay, in the recipe books) is that it’s necessary to bake lemon delicious in a water bath. “What’s that?” you wonder. A water bath is a basin (usually a large, deep roasting pan), filled with water, into which you place the pudding dish. The purpose is to prevent the mixture curdling during cooking.

Due to the fact that every single lemon delicious recipe I’ve seen requires this water bath, I have included the step in my recipe here; however, I have made lemon delicious sans water bath before, and there were no dire side effects. Perhaps I was just lucky.

Place the dish in a water bath

Lemon delicious can be served warm or cold. I don't like to hoe into lemon delicious fresh from the oven, because the sauce is still thin, runny and too hot for my greedy little mouth. I prefer to leave the pudding on the bench for an hour or so and serve lukewarm, or pop it into the fridge and serve cold later on. The sauce will thicken up nicely as the pudding cools. This makes lemon delicous a fantastic dessert to prepare the day before you need it, and keep in the fridge overnight.

Fresh from the oven, the sauce is quite thin

The sauce will thicken as the pudding cools

Ingredients

70 g unsalted butter, softened

200 g caster sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

3 eggs, separated

90 g self-raising flour

400 ml milk

80 ml lemon juice

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C and grease a 2.5 litre baking or casserole dish.
2. Beat butter, sugar and lemon rind with an electric mixer until very well combined.
3. Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each.
4. Add flour, lemon juice a milk, and beat on low speed until combined.
5. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until the form soft peaks. Fold the egg whites into the mixture.
6. Pour mixture into prepared dish, place in water bath and bake uncovered 50 minutes.
7. Leave to cool or refrigerate before serving. Dust with icing sugar and serve with cream.

Serves 6.

Beat egg whites to soft peaks

Tips

• If you’d like to use fresh lemon juice, I suggest you use more than 80 ml. I find that bottled lemon juice has a more concentrated flavour than lemons I squeeze myself (perhaps I should try straining).
• Put a twist on this dish by using lime instead of lemon. Remember that lime has a stronger, sharper flavour than lemon, so you won’t need to use as much zest and juice.