Old Fashioned Pudding Cake

I have had a couple of requests about my favourite cookbooks-and why I choose them.  I didn’t have to think too hard about this one–here is my list of favourite resources, my go-to’s for just about everything…

1.  Food that Really Schmecks, by Edna Staebler–a great collection of Mennonite recipes from Waterloo Region.  Just easy, good, wholesome food!  Especially old fashioned desserts, puddings and cakes!

2.  The Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer–a wonderful go to resource to find out HOW and WHY you do certain things in cooking.  If I don’t know what to do with an ingredient, I go here first.

3.  Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Childs–a step by step instructional book for some of the most basic and most creative French Recipes.  This is a recent addition to my cookbook cupboard–but a very valuable one for learning WHY certain steps are important to the layering of flavour and overall outcome of a dish.

4.  The Internet.  By far the best tool ever to grace a kitchen! If you don’t know how, you can find a recipe, an instructional blog, you can watch a video, you can do almost anything/everything except taste it!

Here is another of my favourite dessert recipes from Food that Really Schmecks–make sure you time it so that you can eat it warm from the oven…mmm…and make sure you save extra room…

Quick (Old Fashioned) Pudding Cake

Mix in the order given and put into a greased baking dish:
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 cup raisins or 1 cup apples chopped
1 cup flour
1tsp baking powder.

Over it pour: 1/2 cup brown sugar, dissolved in 1 cup boiling water, a piece of butter the size of an egg.  Bake 1/2 hour. 
The dough part comes to the top and is surrounded by rich brown sauce-so simple, so quick, so delicious!!
Enjoy!