Pop goes my heart: Warm Honey Cup Pudding

You don’t often meet people who are passionate about something as passionately as you are passionate about the thing you are passionate about. And less often still, that thing you both are passionate about is one and the same.

Usually you share everything about your passion passionately with people and hope that they understand how passionate you are about your passion and for all you know they turn around and call you an idiot.

Yes, I babble often. May be you know that already.  

Again, your workplace is not often the place where you meet that someone who is passionate about the thing you are passionate about and not just that, the same thing turns you from colleagues into friends and then into partners set out for the same goal.

In my case I got lucky and I found someone as passionate about food as I am at my work place. Angona. She is my senior at work, a great friend and one of the funnest people around. But what connects us and hold us together is our love for food. To cut a long story short, after one and a half years of discussing food, where to eat, what to eat, how to eat, how to eat more than you can handle and then handle more than you can eat, we decided we need to roll up our sleeves and take our love for food to the world.

On one of our crazy adventures. And that day we had some great food too. I a village roadside eatery. Memorable stuff I say.

 We did ponder and mull over the idea of a restaurant, small one, no fuss eatery focused on great food…well we didn’t for once think we would be able to do that. Why? We are poor people. That’s why. And those who have nothing, have? God? Yes yes God and…think mortal. Unsuspecting friends who can be swayed into lending their homes, the kitchen and the dining room actually, to extremely talented (blush blush) friends and not throw these friends out no matter what the consequence.

Well we decided we’ll go the pop up way. And get our friends to lend us their space where we would whip up some great food and feed people who understand, love and respect food. We call ourselves PHAT Mamas (I thought Fat first and then I told myself “stop being selfish, this isn’t just about you”)

The process was long and cumbersome. But we did do out first pop up do (it was a backbreaking, nerve wrecking affair) and the theme was Greek. The menu was Minced lamb and dill stuffed tomatoes, served with mini baguettes and garlic parsley butter; Classic Greek salad, Couscous with sultanas and pine nuts (oooh they are expensive, cost us our profit that one) Chicken stifado, a classic Greek stew, usually cooked with beef but we did it with chicken and it was a super hit. And finally for dessert Warm Honey Cup pudding. I did the tomatoes and the pudding and Angona did the rest.

It was quite the success (we didn’t make a profit but earned compliments of people begging for repeats) and we are planning our next one already. Angona is currently on a vacation in Spain savouring the best of Spanish food, and I am a week away from mine in Turkey. Once we are both back we’ll set to work. If you are in Calcutta you could pop by at one of our pop ups.  May be if you are a regular reader of my blog I’ll give you a discount. 

Warm Honey Cup Pudding

Anyway, I though I’ll share the recipe for the honey cup pudding here. Although I am not too fond of following recipes I do with this one though with minor adjustments. This one’s a great recipe and with winters round the corner, this will be a good addition to your kitty.  

Ingredients (Servcs 2)

• 2 tbsp butter, melted, plus extra for greasing the cups
• 2 tsp clear honey, plus extra for drizzling
• 50g self-raising flour
• 25g ground almonds
• 50g light muscovado sugar (we used brown sugar)
• ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 egg
• 85g Greek yogurt (we used hung curd)

Method

1. "Butter two large ramekins,  line the bottoms with a circle of non-stick paper. 
2. Spoon in a teaspoon of  honey to the bottom of each
3. Heat oven to 180C/fan160C/gas 4. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Make sure there are no  lumps of sugar in the mixture. Get your fingers dirty to ensure that. 
4. Beat the egg, butter and yogurt together, then stir into the dry mix until smooth. Spoon the mix into the cups, sit them on a baking tray, then bake for 20 mins until risen and golden. 
5. You'll know they are ready if a skewer (I use all kinds of thing...safe stuff) inserted through the centre comes out clean.
6. Loosen the edge of each pudding with a blunt knife or something, then up-turn them onto plates. I don't have to tell you that you have to remove those little discs of papaer do I?
7. Now the original recipe suggested we serve this delicious goodie with a pistachio ice cream. Honestly we didn't think we would have the time to whip that one up. Instead we decided to serve it with some fresh cream. And generous drizzle of honey. We did and it was a hit.

 Recipe courtesy:  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10201/warm-honey-cup-puddings

Notes: If you do not get or have self raising flour MY GOOD FRIEND friend Nigella (Yes Lawson, believe me she is a friend, the one in need)  has just the right trick. 2 tsp of baking powder for 150g of flour. Sift the two together and voila its ready for use.

Okay, honestly today's  post is more like a filler. I was feeling extremely guilty for not having posted anything worthwhile in the last few days, But I have been caught up at work and couldn't spend a lot of time eating or cooking...so. But I promise to be back tomorrow with a fantastic recipe. Till then...