For those with a sweet tooth, Alexa Johnston is the baker of the nation
Words: Nakita Ardern
Alexa Johnston has a clear message for New Zealanders, “Save lives – eat pudding!”
Her third cookbook, What’s for Pudding? by the art historian-turned baker extraordinaire explores the history behind many of New Zealand’s favourite puddings and why it is so important that we don’t stop eating them.
“In the mid-twentieth-century New Zealand mothers were exhorted to make milky puddings for their children as an important contribution to their healthy growth,” Alexa explains. “Today there’s so much in the news saying sugar is bad for you – and it is in excessive amounts – but many of these recipes have generous servings of healthy milk as the key ingredient. For those kids who don’t want to drink milk, they’ll be happy to eat it when it’s in the form of a baked rice pudding or a coconut blancmange.”
Puddings may have become an occasional treat nowadays rather than a daily dose of calcium, but in Alexa’s experience pudding is an insurance against late-night grazing – and she believes children sleep better after they’ve had a nice pudding. What’s more, she is an advocate that puddings create communities within families. “It’s hard to keep people apart when there’s pudding dished up on the table after all.”
Alexa Johnston grew up in Auckland, the middle daughter of Malcolm Johnston, a Presbyterian minister and Paula Johnston, a primary school teacher, both of whom gave cheerful encouragement to her early interest in baking and cooking.
After completing an MA in Art History in 1978 Alexa spent 19 years as a curator at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.
At 43 she had come to the point where she had been at the gallery long enough and wanted a change.
“I was lucky enough to get the job straight out of university and had thoroughly enjoyed my time there, but at the end of the day I didn’t want to be remembered just for working in a museum.”
So she became a freelance writer and curator, and in 2002 was a curator of the exhibition Sir Edmund Hillary: Everest and Beyond for Auckland War Memorial Museum. Her work led to an authorised, illustrated biography of Sir Edmund Hillary: An Extraordinary Life, which was published in 2005.
She then went on to write an award-winning book about traditional home baking, Ladies, a Plate and its sequel, A Second Helping, both of which pay tribute to the skills of earlier generations of home bakers.
At 58, after having spent “a lifetime cooking”, What’s for Pudding? celebrates the power of this woman’s creativity. Alexa made and tested all the recipes for her cookbook (as well as taking all the photographs herself) in her home kitchen in Auckland.
In What’s for Pudding? she extends her reach beyond morning and afternoon teas to the pudding course, presenting fail-safe, old favourite recipes with her usual blend of food history, cooking tips and stories.
“I do love telling stories – I’m an endless talker,” Alexa quips. “Friends would always ask me for recipes and they’d get a story with it – which they loved. One friend to whom I gave Coffee Bavarian Cream was astonished to learn that I used a recipe from the 1920s – he had no idea they ate such delectable things back then.”
“This book is an acknowledgement of those amazing women who have gone before us and the linked chain of passing on recipes.”
In fact, it was from Sir Ed that she was told, ‘If you’re interested in something, look around for someone older than you and ask them about it’.
“Intergenerational conversations are really important. As a child I had hot puddings like lemon delicious often. But in 1-2 generations this recipe is almost unheard of. This was once a staple recipe for New Zealanders and in 20 years it has disappeared. We need to keep passing on recipes even if baking may seem nanaish.”
In the book she writes…
“We live in the present – as everyone always has – but the past is available to us in many ways. We read books, listen to music, go to plays and films and look at works of art made many years ago; they bring us pleasure and may even help with the challenges of living today. Food also has the capacity to enchant, and to slow us down a little – and puddings have always had those qualities in spades.”
Alexa’s next project, a book on home preserves, jams, jellies and fruit liqueurs is due to be released in 2013.
Baked Bread and Butter Pudding
Ingredients
6–8 thick, 6–8
slices stale bread* slices
2 tbsp softened butter 30 g
3–4 tbsp jam** 3–4 tbsp
1 pint full-cream milk 600 ml
4 eggs 4
¼ cup sugar 50 g
cinnamon and sugar for sprinkling
icing sugar for dusting
* crusts removed
** optional, or marma
If you use soft, white sliced bread you risk getting a gluey texture in your pudding so try to use slices of sourdough or wholemeal bread, at least two days old. Some recipes suggest tearing the bread into pieces rather than slices (good with brioche or an open-textured baguette) and others reduce the bread to crumbs, but the basic approach is the same. Fresh breadcrumbs can be quickly made in the food processor – a significant improvement on having to grate them by hand.
Making the pudding
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Fill a greased 6-cup/1.5-litre ovenproof dish with layers of the bread spread with the butter; or with butter and jam, or butter and marmalade.
2. Instead of using jam or marmalade to flavour and sweeten the pudding, you could sprinkle each layer with a little sugar and a few currants or sultanas and maybe some ground spices. Try a pinch of cardamom with apricot jam, for example.
3. Gently heat the milk, and just before it boils pour it on to the eggs and sugar, whisking all the time. Strain into a jug and pour slowly and evenly over the bread and butter. (Add a few tablespoons of whisky or sherry to the custard if you wish.)
4. Let the pudding sit for about half an hour, pushing the bread down every now and then to ensure it soaks up the custard mixture – you don’t want to end up with dry patches.
5. Sprinkle some more sugar and maybe a little cinnamon on top and bake the pudding for about 45 minutes sitting in another dish filled with hot water – this stops the custard mixture from boiling and spoiling. When it is cooked, a sharp knife pushed gently into the centre should come out clean. Dust with icing sugar and serve. Enough for 4–6 people.
Roger’s Layered Bread and Butter Pudding
This is my friend’s, Roger Blackley’s invention and it’s a very good-looking pudding. Cover the base of a baking dish with slices of dark rye bread, preferably with sunflower seeds in it, spreading each slice generously with butter and lime marmalade. Fill the dish with slices of buttered baguette and some rum-soaked raisins or sultanas. Top with another layer of the rye bread, butter-and-marmalade side down. Pour the custard mixture over (see basic recipe this page) and leave to sit for 30 minutes, pressing down occasionally with your hand. Bake as usual and serve warm rather than hot to ensure the layers hold together. It is also delicious cold.
Plum Ice Cream
Ingredients
8 red-fleshed plums
4 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp water
1 tin evaporated milk
1 tsp gelatine
4 tbsp water
pinch salt
¾ cup icing sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla essence
½ tsp cinnamon
In early New Zealand cookery books evaporated milk is often suggested as an economical substitute for fresh cream. If well chilled it will whip up like cream and can be sweetened, flavoured and frozen – or combined with a fruit jelly and set in a mould to make a fluffy flummery dessert. I like to use a strongly flavoured fruit like plums in this ice cream, which is a useful recipe for those times when you want to make ice cream and there’s not enough milk or cream in the fridge. This version is from Puddings A-Plenty published in 1968 by the members of the St Chad’s Ladies Guild, Fairfield, Hamilton, where it is called ‘Nourishing Ice Cream’. This is probably a reference to the egg, but nourishing or not, it tastes pretty good.
Getting ready
1. Halve and stone the plums and cook them gently with the sugar and water. Chill and chop them with their juice. Or used bottled or tinned plums.
2. Have the evaporated milk thoroughly chilled. Put a lidded container that will hold 8 cups/2 litres into the freezer. Soften the gelatine in 4 tbsp water, then heat gently until the gelatine dissolves and allow to cool.
Mixing and freezing
1. Whip the evaporated milk with the salt until it is thick and creamy. Add the sifted icing sugar and continue whipping for a couple of minutes until the mixture really fluffs up.
2. Beat in the egg, gelatine and essence and fold in the chopped plums and the cinnamon. (I sometimes mix through a couple of tablespoons of plum jam for a rippled effect.)
3. Pour into the chilled container, cover and freeze. This recipe does not require a second beating. Enough for at least 10 people.
...or try Blackcurrant Ice Cream
Cook 1 cup of frozen blackcurrants in a few tablespoons of water with 2 tbsp caster sugar. Mash the fruit roughly, taste for sweetness, cool and fold through the mixture with the egg and gelatine.
Reprinted with permission from What’s For Pudding? published by Penguin NZ, RRP $50.00. Copyright © text and photographs Alexa Johnston, 2011
