This pudding is delicious and easy to prepare. The soft butter cake cooked in the same pan as the caramel sauce.
Real Poor Man Caramel Pudding is made with brown sugar, not maple syrup. Nowadays there are now recipes for “Poor Man Pudding” prepared with maple syrup which should rather be called “Maple Syrup Pudding”. Traditional Quebec cookbooks list the two puddings. How can we talk about a dessert for the poor man if we prepare it with expensive maple syrup.
The recipe for Poor Man Caramel Pudding appeared during the financial crisis around 1930. Recipes made with inexpensive ingredients were very popular at the time. There were even Poor Man Caramel Pudding prepared without eggs and without butter. Out of curiosity I tried a recipe without egg and without butter and I found that the pudding frankly lacks flavor.
Lately I have had the desire to improve my Poor Man Caramel Pudding recipe because I found the one I had a little too sweet for my taste. So here is my latest version of the Pudding which required some testing.
It is essential to prepare the pudding with dark brown sugar for an authentically caramelized sauce as in the past.
Put the grill at the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 ° F. Butter a 9-inch x 6-inch x 3-inch baking pan with a capacity of approximately 6 cups.
Put the brown sugar, butter and water in a medium pot. Over medium heat, bring to a boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Boil for 1 minute, remove from heat and set aside.
In a medium bowl or the stand mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar until smooth. Add the egg and beat until the mixture turns pale and homogeneous
In a second bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt and stir into the first mixture, alternating with milk and vanilla. Scrape the bowl once or twice during this step and beat until smooth not more. Pour the dough in the mold and pour the sauce over the dough without mixing it (when baking, the cake will float on the sauce).
Bake for 30 Minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of the pudding comes out clean.
Ingredients
Directions
Put the grill at the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 ° F. Butter a 9-inch x 6-inch x 3-inch baking pan with a capacity of approximately 6 cups.
Put the brown sugar, butter and water in a medium pot. Over medium heat, bring to a boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Boil for 1 minute, remove from heat and set aside.
In a medium bowl or the stand mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar until smooth. Add the egg and beat until the mixture turns pale and homogeneous
In a second bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt and stir into the first mixture, alternating with milk and vanilla. Scrape the bowl once or twice during this step and beat until smooth not more. Pour the dough in the mold and pour the sauce over the dough without mixing it (when baking, the cake will float on the sauce).
Bake for 30 Minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of the pudding comes out clean.
2 Responses
Back then maple syrup wasn’t nearly as expensive as it is now. Especially being in rural Quebec, almost everyone knew someone who had a sugar bush. My family was very poor French Canadian farmers and used maple syrup almost exclusively because that’s what they had. Stupid to think maple syrup was for rich people back then.
Hello, I have never witness as you say probably in your region it was like you say you were lucky. From what I have learned interviewing many people in many regions of the province unfortunately in most regions of Quebec maple syrup was expensive except for the south of the province for people living on a farm with a sugarbush. Even then I learned that most of the time they sold their maple syrup for a living as they did with most of their butter and eggs.
When I was a child maple syrup was considered luxury and to everyone I know in the Mauricie region.
Micheline