There are so many things I love about the Heirloom Recipe Series, unexpected things that I could never have imagined when I first dreamed up the concept. One of my favorites is how excited people get about their recipes and the stories behind them. Through this process, they learn things and ask family members things they otherwise would never have known.
I am so happy to have the lovely Sarah Copeland today as a guest in the Series – blogger at edible living and new author of The Newlywed Cookbook { we’re giving away one this week! }. In keeping with a marriage theme, Sarah has the most fabulous love story for us below that involves this wonderful recipe. This could very well be one of my favorites in the Series to date, I do hope you enjoy it as much as I have!
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Heirloom Recipe Series with Sarah Copeland
My Granddad Copeland brought this recipe for Brown Sugar Pudding home from a boarding house in Missouri where he stayed not long after he and my grandmother were secretly married. He gave the recipe to his young bride, my Grandma, Virginia, who I’m told would make it for him just as often as he wanted for the rest of their lives. Grandma and Granddad were married almost 70 years {I know, amazing!}, and were the definition of forever newlyweds. They were always lavishing each other with love and tenderness, which in Grandma’s case often came in the form of good southern cooking.
About marriage and love, Grandma always said to us “learn to make his favorite things.”
The original scanned recipe is in my aunt Gloria’s hand. She, the youngest of my grandparents three girls (they had three girls, then three boys), hand wrote all her mother’s recipes out for my aunt Dorothy, the eldest, when Dorothy got married in 1952. This is one of those pages, which Dorothy used for all the years of her own marriage.
When my parents were married, in 1969, my Aunt Dorothy wrote a hand-written copy of the recipe for my mother (attached). On hers, she wrote “Eat all you want ~ magic ~ it feeds all at your table.” I especially loved that line. It sounds just like my grandma, and it was the truth. Everything she made fed everyone at the table, whether there were 6 or 16, and I never remember there being leftovers of anything. That’s is the spirit of my book, and I hope the love and spirit everyone feels around my table. May it grow to hold 16 one day.
Brown Sugar Pudding
1 1/2 cups/300 g packed brown sugar
2 cups/480 ml hot water
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup/115 g all purpose flour
1/2 cup/100 g granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp iodized salt
1/2 cup/120 ml whole milk
1/2 cup/85 g raisins
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Freshly grated nutmeg
Preheat the oven to 450˚F/230˚C/gas 8.
In a big, wide, cast-iron pan {about 10 in/25 cm} mix together brown sugar and water until smooth. Add the butter. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook until the sugar dissolves into a deep brown sauce.
Meanwhile, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, raisins, and vanilla in a medium bowl to make a thick batter. Pour the batter into the boiling brown sugar sauce and stir just a little with a wooden spoon to encourage it to bubble to the top. Sprinkle freshly grated nutmeg over the top.
Bake the pudding until it is browned and just set with brown sugar sauce welled up in puddles between the cake, 15 to 20 minutes. Serve warm.
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New author Sarah Copeland is a recipe developer, having worked with Food Network and co-founder of their charitable initiative Good Food Garden with Share Our Strength. She writes a fabulous blog over at edible living, and be sure also to follower her on Twitter @edibleliving too!
