Spotted Dick

Last edited Sat Feb 8, 2014, 11:45 PM - Edit history (2)

I thought I would share my latest adventure in English puddings. I'm still gathering the things I'll need to try my hand at
a steamed pudding, but in looking over various pudding recipes I 'spotted' one with an unusual and provocative name called
Spotted Dick. Turns out it's a very common one and it sounded much like a fruitcake, at least in flavor and ingredients used.
The 'spotted' part of the name has to do with the spots of fruit in the pudding and the 'dick' part is thought to be one of those
distorted words for 'pudding' that stuck several hundred years ago.
Turns out a foodie friend had seen this product sold in a can and thought it might be a good idea to try it before settling on this
pudding for my first recipe. So I went on Amazon and ordered it - it comes in a can (made by Heinz). I had also read that it was often served with a simple custard and saw another canned product called Devon Custard by Ambrosia that is also sold in England. So I purchased that too. The items arrived yesterday and the instructions for the spotted dick provide a choice of either boiling the can for 35 minutes or removing it from the can and microwaving it. I chose to boil the can in keeping with the process of steamed puddings. I put a couple of pints of water in a big pot and just placed the unopened can of spotted dick in there.
When it was time I carefully removed and then opened the can and saw what looked like a very moist, dark and spongy cake (sized for one or two people).
I placed it on a serving dish and immediately poured some of the custard over the top. The custard tasted something like the Gerber's baby food custard if you've ever had a taste of that. It's not terribly thick or sweet and seems to be a pleasant enough topping for cakes. Anyway, I could barely wait to get my fork in it. For pudding and custard out of a can it was surprisingly homemade tasting (or at least it seems so - I'll have to try the real homemade version before I can be certain of that).
It was much lighter and spongier in texture than the dense fruit cakes most of us are used to, but the flavor wasn't all that different.
It was much sweeter than I normally like my desserts. So much so it almost made my teeth ache. If I were to serve this as a quick dessert again I would not combine it with custard but would use something to counter or cut the sweetness such as a cream cheese, or yogurt or something with a sour non-sweet taste. Anyway, that's my first adventure with English pudding! I think I will find another recipe for my first attempts at steamed pudding...something less sweet and not quite as rich.

Here's a picture of it I found on Wiki - the canned version looked just like this: