Hollygog Pudding

For this month's Random Recipe challenge Dom of Belleau Kitchen has asked us to come up with desserts and to pick a random recipe from one of our cookbooks dedicated to desserts, cakes or puddings. I suppose it just proves that I like more general cookbooks, but after a quick search through the bookshelves I found only one such book: “The National Trust Book of Traditional Puddings” by Sara Paston-Williams, published in the eighties. (Although this particular book is now out of print the National Trust currently sell several books that cover much the same ground and seem to be derived largely from this original collection of recipes).

There were two recipes on the randomly chosen page in the book: I could have selected a roly-poly pudding, but who could turn down the opportunity to make something called Hollygog pudding? The original recipe comes from Kiddington in Oxfordshire and, in fact, it is a kind of roly-poly pudding filled with golden syrup and cooked in milk. Not the sort of dish I make very often and maybe a little more suited to midwinter than spring, but it's old-fashioned, unashamed comfort food. And that can't be bad.

Hollygog Pudding
225 g plain flour
Pinch of salt
125 g butter or lard, diced (I used butter)
About 3 tbsp cold water
4 tbsp golden syrup, warmed
About 250 ml milk

Sieve the flour and salt into a mixing bowl and rub the butter or lard into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add enough of the water to form a stiff dough.

Roll out on a floured surface into a rectangular strip. (Don’t try to make it too thin or it will start to break up). Spread with the golden syrup and roll up like a Swiss roll.

Put into a buttered ovenproof dish and pour in enough milk to come about halfway up the side of the pudding. Bake at 200°C for 30-45 minutes. The pastry should have taken on a light golden colour and much of the milk will have disappeared.

Cut the roll into slices and serve hot with plenty of custard or cream and maybe a little drizzle of yet more golden syrup.

Comments

  1. Oh my. This really is a random recipe!! I'm not mad on this kind of thing but I know The Viking loves this sort of pudding. Love the name too. We call our dog Hollydog... Thanks for taking part Phil. Xx

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  2. I still have to choose mine!!

    Looks so good. And the name is wonderful, haha.

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  3. What a brilliant name! It reminds me of school puddings ( in a good way!).

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  4. Comfort food! Yum! Yum!
    I think Nigella has a similar recipe in her 'Express' book. I didn't know it was based on an old English pud.

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  5. I've never heard of hollygog pudding (even though I don't live all that far from its origins) but I love the name and the pudding sounds awesome - anything with golden syrup in it gets a thumbs up from me :)

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  6. This looks very, err, robust! Thanks for your hilarious comment on my RR post - I'll be sure to pass it on to Kate and Wills and all my other celeb mates when they pop around after the Rugby World Cup in October. Perhaps I'll even make them this pud!

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  7. Thanks for the comments everyone. I still think it's a great name for a dish but I think I'll reserve the pudding for a very cold night in January and not a warm night in May next time. And yes Miss Cake Baker it is like school puddings except that in my case they were inedible and had pink custard.
    Anna - This will probably get me thrown out of the Union of Food Bloggers but I have to make the terrible confession that I haven't looked at a Nigella book for several years. But I promise to look at Express and compare recipes.
    And Kitchen Maid, please remind Wills that he owes me a fiver. I could say more but Bruce Springsteen has just popped round and we're off down the pub to have a pint with Carla Bruni and Brad Pitt.

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  8. I love jam roly poly and all the lovely traditional puddings so I know I would love this too. What a great idea to use the syrup instead of jam. I may revisit this but, as you say, more suited to mid winter.

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  9. Wow, a roly-poly pudding with golden syrup - heaven on a plate. It looks extremely bad for you and therefore utterly delicious !!

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