Creamy, jammy, spongy, buttery; there isn’t a button that malva pudding doesn’t press for those of us with an overly sweet tooth. In fact, I got so inspired while researching for this column that I had a wild rush of blood to the head and decided to switch the standard recipe for it up a notch. Okay, two notches. I’m calling it Dark Malva Pudding, and my recipe for it is below.
Food52 also cites Henry Kissinger as having called it “one of the finest desserts I’ve ever eaten”. This may not be an entirely accurate quote. South African connoisseur, restaurateur and food writer par excellence Michael Olivier was there, and he vouches for Kissinger having eaten it.
But the Wikipedia entry, for all its several hundred words, doesn’t really say much, nor is it emphatic about the few mild assertions it does make. Malva pudding is of South African origin, many sources attest, but then again, it may actually have originated in the Netherlands to be brought to the Cape colony in 1652 and served to poncy colonial types by their minions. There is no great swath of evidence for this however.
Malva had been a popular pudding when Pepler was growing up. This week Michael cited a story that the venerable Peter Veldsman used to tell about the dessert having been given the name when David Rawdon garnished the pudding with geraniums at Lanzerac in the veteran hotelier’s Stellenbosch days before he took over the Lord Milner at Matjiesfontein village.