Camp Coffee and a Heritage of Comfort: Grandma's Coffee Ginger Pudding

 I associate Camp Chicory & Coffee Essence with comfort from my childhood, since there was comfort to be found in baking with my Grandma, and the taste of it today remains wonderfully nostalgic, having steeped in the flavour for so many years. From my life, there's one pudding that I'm always keen for my friends and those who I care the most about to try, one that takes patience and preparation, but can be enjoyed all on it's own as arguably the most satisfying, warm, and comforting serving imaginable: Coffee Ginger Pudding.

This pudding can be traced back over four generations of women in my family, having been made by myself, my Mum, my Grandma, and my Great-Grandma who brought it into our lives, Gwen. While I never met Gwen, I have her to thank for my favourite and most genuinely enjoyed dessert. The handwritten recipe card (thankfully put to paper by my Grandma for posterity!), met with my sheer delight whenever it's pulled out in the kitchen, is part of our family heritage.

Often, origins in any family can become part-folklore, part-truth, but I understand the story of this pudding to be as follows: My Great-Grandfather, Eric, had a particular  fondness for ginger, in all it's glorious forms. While savouring generous heaps of the pudding and praising the manifold merits, my Grandma Sylvia and 'Great-Aunt' Cissy told me that "Dad had loved" ginger cake from the shop with custard... ginger biscuits... crystallised ginger at Christmas, and more besides. With this in mind, Gwen had a keen eye for any recipe that called for ginger.

Coffee Ginger Pudding was a wartime pudding, since it required no eggs, minimal fat, and could be made using Camp Chicory & Coffee essence, the saviour of many a much-needed treat during that era. Gwen received food parcels from a friend in Australia, including some powdered ginger here and there. Armed with her trusty Camp essence, she was also supposedly sent the fated recipe for Coffee Ginger Pudding, on account of hearing just how much Eric enjoyed his ginger-based foods. While a Scottish chicory and coffee essence, Camp had excellent traction in Australia, and is still available there today as a heritage staple. This nicely brings together the two key players in the aforementioned recipe: ginger and coffee, for what can only be adequately described as a deeply comforting, generous, and nostalgic pudding experience.

To make Coffee Ginger Pudding, you first need to acquire an unsliced medium loaf of bread from your baker or supermarket bakery of choice, and just leave it exposed to go stale somewhere dry and toasty for a few days. With one loaf, I made the mistake of leaving it out in the garage, where a mouse got to it and managed to hollow the entire thing out.

Needless to say, I left the second loaf somewhere more suitable, and was able to obtain the necessary breadcrumbs without incident! Dried loaf in hand, you need to give it a blitz in the blender until you get fine breadcrumbs for the recipe. This is the first step. Once you've bagged-up your breadcrumbs, you're well on the road to enjoying some jolly good pudding. Now comes the full ingredients required for the recipe proper:

Grandma Gwen's Camp Coffee Ginger Pudding

Ingredients 

• 6oz Self Raising Flour
• 2oz Breadcrumbs (see above)
• 3oz Suet 
• 2oz Brown Sugar 
• 1 heaped teaspoon Powdered Ginger 
• 1 tablespoon Camp Chicory & Coffee Essence
• 2 tablespoons Golden Syrup (to line the pudding bowl/basin)
• Milk 

Do bear in mind that this is a steamed pudding and there are many ways to, well, steam a pudding. We have a three-tier steamer, and tend to just fill the bottom section with the water for boiling, and pop the pudding basin or bowl into the second section, disregarding the third section, for the steaming itself. More on this below.

Earlier, I mentioned patience and preparation. Once you've got your breadcrumbs sorted, you're halfway there. All that's left is to put two substantial tablespoons of golden syrup into the bottom of the pudding bowl or basin that you'll use for the business of steaming, and to combine all of the dry ingredients in a separate, large bowl.

You'll want to add milk and stir the mixture together until you reach a moist, 'dropping' consistency. With this achieved, you can spoon the pudding mixture into your treacle-pooled pudding bowl and cover the top with tin foil to form a lid.

Now, you may have a fancy pudding steamer, so this step may vary, but the end result ought to be much the same, in theory. Pudding safely installed, steam it in a steamer or very large saucepan of boiling water for 1-1.5 hours. When the pudding is ready, it'll be springy and more cake-like, smelling divine from the Camp and ginger flavouring. If you're feeling adventurous, you might like to tip the pudding out onto a plate, otherwise, cutting into quarters works just as well, and ensures that a party of four will have a lovely doorstop wedge of pudding. Hurrah!

With my friends at Camp celebrating Heritage Month, I thought it only fitting to share one of my family's most special recipes, reminiscing on nostalgic flavours and bakes. Being asked by them to take part in this celebration was such a joy, as I immediately knew what I'd be making to share with you all. I wrote another post paying homage to this cupboard staple and on the comfort of inherited recipes which you may wish to read as a companion piece to this one. Baking and making with Camp provides a versatile bridge between the past and the present, and I can only most wholeheartedly encourage you to add it to your own kitchen cupboard if you don't already have a bottle in pride of place.

With warmth and the comforting combination of ground ginger and Camp Coffee essence,

Chloe
(Noted by Chloe)