Claire Macdonald’s Upside-Down Pear and Walnut Gingerbread Pudding – A Review

For me Winter means soups, stews, casseroles and warm puddings. Even though we’re just about to head into the first days of Spring, it still feels like Winter out there and I’m looking for something warm, sweet and sticky to indulge in with a good cup of coffee.

Recently, my cousin and I were reminiscing about the sticky gingerbread cakes of our youth, the type where you had to peel the baking paper case off as it was SO sticky.  I was telling her how I’d been leafing through one of my old reliable cookbooks, the Claire Macdonald Cookbook {Birlinn} and came across a lovely recipe for an upside-down pear and walnut gingerbread pudding which I really wanted to try!

I finally grabbed a few moments and made it yesterday.  What can I say!  I’m transported back in time!  The pudding is glorious in its simplicity and in its flavour.  The recipe calls for tinned pears {of which I had a few}, a brown sugar and butter sauce and a lovely ginger and treacle batter.  I have to admit that I used pecan nuts instead of walnuts as I didn’t have any.  As I don’t have a pudding basin, I placed the pears, nuts and sauce on the bottom of  a flat-bottomed glass ovenproof dish, poured in the batter and cooked it until a skewer came out clean.  The downside to using the dish is that I couldn’t easily turn out the pudding onto a plate and have the delicious sauce flowing down the sides of the pudding.

This is a very filling pudding!  The ginger flavour is strong but not overpowering, the pears working perfectly alongside.  Hubbie was much impressed, stopping only short of licking his plate.  I will definitely be making the pudding again this weekend as it is truly scrummy and this time I’ll use a pudding bowl for sure!

Yet again, Claire Macdonald has provided me with another dessert to add to my repetoire that is absolutely foolproof.  It’s also freezable which is always an added bonus.  The Claire Macdonald Cookbook has been reprinted by Birlinn Ltd and is available at Amazon and other good bookshops.  Let me know if you make the pudding and how you get on!

Xx Paula