Grammy’s homemade pudding that will make mama cry.

Grammy’s homemade pudding that will make my mama cry. My weekend project this week is to try my hand at making grammy’s homemade style potato pudding, and the result as you will see will make my mama cry. 

Those may well be tears of joy though, because, as it turned out, it isn’t half bad after all. Come along with me as I venture to show you how to make a homemade pudding like my gramma used to make em. Lucky for me though, gramma isn’t here anymore to give it to me if it should turn out not quite as she had thought me. Well, not that part, not lucky that she is not, but… you get what I mean, right?

Ingredients

Some ingredients for potato pudding

So. Here now is what we need for the task, some of them that is, gramma wouldn’t be too thrilled if she should find out that I’m going about giving away the family secret, just like that, for nothing even, when all that we done got already is “nothin,” I mean, nothing, really. So, we need sweet potato for sure, can’t be making sweet potato pudding without those can we? We need one dried coconut, not as in opposed to wet or even green for that matter, we need it bone dry, or brown dry, with water on the inside of course. How will you know? You shake it, dummy, sorry, I mean, like mammy, mammy shakes the nut while listening for the water responding on the inside. We’ll need some flour, sugar to taste, butter, a pinch of salt to your taste, I do add about a cup of cornmeal to my potato pudding mix, just to sort of balance out the color and texture of the final product. You don’t have to though unless you want to. Spices, add spices to taste. I add a dash of vanilla, half of a nutmeg (grated) a pinch of cinnamon powder, or you can do as I did and just toss in a few bits of the bark. The cinnamon bark that is.

Method

Preparing the liquid mix

Grate the coconut, or you may use a blender if you are too stoosh, sorry, I mean, the sophisticated, type. Wash the grated coconut to separate the juice, (the coconut cream) from the base, (the trash) you do this by adding warm water to the grated stack and squeeze out the “juice.” Now there’s a particular technique involved here. Add the warm water, not hot okay, we wouldn’t want any lawsuits here now because somebody got burnt with hot water upon our “advice.” Where we came from, we wouldn’t need the warm water, everything there is warm enough, to begin with. But here?  You are going to strain the juice, with a fine strainer, or sift, to separate all base residues, (the trash) save the juice (the coconut milk) in a large enough container since you are going to be adding and mixing in other ingredients. Note: you may do like others and just skip the process of the coconut. Use what dem gal, sorry, I mean use evaporated milk like what some other folks do. Moving along.

Add other ingredients to coconut juice

Whichever of the liquid mixer you may choose, you are going to add the sugar, spices: grated nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, vanilla and as in my case, I add about half of the butter, being sure that the mix is warm yet. It doesn’t really matter much though, the heated oven will see to that, but there may appear some hallowed places in your finished product if your butter gets in into a cold mix. Now that my mix is prepared and waiting, I then turn to prepare the rest. Peel the potatoes, being careful to remove dark spots which may be signs of w… let’s say, intruders, some tiny creatures tends to feast on the wholesome goodness of sweet potatoes, the same as we sometimes do. So bear this in mind, it’s not a big deal though. Now for the real job, big people’s job.

Grating the potatoes. Well, it’s really not that hard, surely not as hard as grating the coconut. So, just do it and relax. Now, that was easy. Add the flour, two to three cups, and mix it in with a spoon, here I am using a wooden spoon, works well for me. If your cups are larger than mine, then add more flour as may be needed. How will I know you asked? Well, look at the texture of the mix. If it appears to be coarse and grainy, add a bit more flour, until it appears smooth. Add the remaining portion of your mix to the batter until it flows, heavily yes, but flows. Now for the remainder of the butter, I have two uses for this. Here is where I pre-heat my oven. I set the oven to pre-heat at 400 degrees F. I also place my baking tin inside the oven at this time to warm it up a bit.

Prepping the baking tin 

Then I take a piece of the remaining butter and rub the interior of the tin to sort of grease it, and then I pour in my pudding mixture. And then I place the rest of the butter on top. This is because I want my pudding to sport a crusty top, as opposed to a soft top, you might have seen some folks’ puddings with a soft and somewhat creamy top. Here is where they would have added a more sugary mix on top and be sure to replenish this topping in the baking process, I think, since they don’t want it to dry out, this is how they came by the creamy top, I think, this would be how you would get your creamy top too, probably. Let it sit for about an hour and twenty minutes, or until you stick a fork in it and it comes back out nearly clean. Go ahead, stick a fork in me, I’m just about done too.

Finish product 

So, this is the result of my efforts at trying grammy’s homemade pudding this weekend. I’m not planning on sending even so much as a crumb for my mama though, I sure wouldn’t want to see her cry. Not for this cause at least. I hope it works out well enough for you though. Or else, bite m… I mean, bite into it.

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Extra, extra. On this day in history 

Sunday 27th

2010 - Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple iPad.

2002 - A series of explosions occurred at a military dump in Lagos, Nigeria. More than 1,000 people were killed in the blast and in the attempt to escape.

1984 - Carl Lewis beat his own two-year-old record by 9-1/4 inches when he set a new indoor world record with a long jump mark of 28 feet, 10-1/4 inches.

1984 - Wayne Gretzky set a National Hockey League (NHL) record for consecutive game scoring. He ended the streak at 51 games.

1977 - The Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests.

1945 - Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.

1926 - John Baird, a Scottish inventor, demonstrated a pictorial transmission machine called television.

1888 - The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington, DC.

Saturday 26th

2009 - The Icelandic government and banking system collapsed. Prime Minister Geir Haarde resigned.

1950 - India officially proclaimed itself a republic as Rajendra Prasad took the oath of office as president.

1947 - "The Greatest Story Ever Told" was first heard on ABC radio

1934 - The Apollo Theatre opened in New York City.

1905 - The Cullinan diamond, at 3,106.75 carats, was found by Captain Wells at the Premier Mine, near Pretoria, South Africa.

1500 - Vicente Yáñez Pinzón discovered Brazil.