Recipe: Malva pudding
By Daisy Jones, 12 August 2020
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A while ago my chef friend asked me for the gold standard malva pudding recipe. I had a handwritten copy of the one from Magdaleen van Wyk and Pat Barton’s 1993 cookbook Kos Wat Ons Ken, so I gave her that.
It’s not the first time I’ve been asked for the best recipe for this Cape classic: a baked, sauce-smothered sponge that smells like roasted honey and has tinned apricot jam, cheap vinegar and bicarb as its secret ingredients.
My teenage daughter quite frequently wants to know why we don’t have malva pudding in the house. “I want something hot and sweet, and I want it now,” she says from the couch. “Why don’t we ever make malva pudding? Why?”
So I decided to make several malva puddings, using recipes that popped up after a Google search. I thought we all deserved to know which was, in fact, the gold standard. The uncontroversial result: SA’s best malva pudding recipe is old and oft-celebrated and comes from Boschendal wine farm.
Forget Maggie Pepler’s humble ingredients – and the fact that this recipe needs nothing more in the way of equipment than a bowl and a wooden spoon – this is a genius pudding, worthy of craving and whining. Her perfect Malva has at least three textures: it’s caramel-crunchy at the edges, melt-in-the-mouth smooshy in the middle, and super-moist spongey in between. The three textures are the result of a long bake, followed by drenching in a warm, buttery-sweet sauce from the stove. It’s best served warm, with custard or thin cream.
One of the recipes I tried produced a delicious pudding, but it was thin and wet throughout – not just like a soaked sponge; rather like a soaked bath sponge. Another used a quarter of a cup of balsamic vinegar – instead of Pepler’s tablespoon of white wine vinegar. I was excited when I found a recipe for “Steven Biko Malva Pudding”. Sadly it was just Pepler’s recipe, renamed.
Malva pudding is ubiquitous these days. Many restaurants offer it – especially those aiming to impress foreign guests – and it’s a supermarket ready-meal standard. The Woolworths version is good. Pick n Pay does one. So does Checkers. Last week I bought an Ina Paarman malva pudding baking kit.
When Barack Obama visited South Africa, malva pudding rounded off a state banquet. Oprah Winfrey’s chef makes a version of it. It’s such a staple of boerekos – right up there with boerewors and milk tart – you’d think it had been around since the 1700s. It may well have been, but food writers like Nikki Werner and Errieda du Toit, who have searched for decades-old recipes (and even the origin of the name), have been thwarted.
What is agreed is that Pepler joined the Boschendal Restaurant in 1977. She brought her malva pudding recipe with her and served it as part of the wine farm’s famous lunch buffet. From that day forward, Pepler’s malva pudding occupied pride-of-place among the desserts every day for 34 years.
We know this thanks to Michael Olivier, a wine and food commentator who has written for Winemag. In the 1970s, Olivier was the PR manager for Boschendal. It was he who asked Pepler to cook in the kitchen while the head chef was away.
Olivier tells us that Henry Kissinger loved the malva pudding and ginger snaps when he visited. The daughters of Lord Mountbatten, the Countess of Burma and Lady Pamela Hicks, were guests. French designer Pierre Cardin and celebrities from the film and music worlds were welcomed at the buffet table.
It’s hard to imagine there was ever a time when Cape wine farms didn’t have parking lots and delis, cafes, restaurants and chefs. But so it was. In the late 1970s and early 1980s almost no wine farms offered eating experiences. If you were lucky you could visit for wine tastings from little branded glasses (they came with tasting tickets inside and you kept them afterwards) – and crushingly boring, barrel-scented cellar tours (trust me, the only thing the cellar tours had to recommend them was cool respite from the heat outside. Then again, in those years, as a primary school child, I may not have been the ideal audience.) Boschendal only offered one meal – the roast – and there was no menu. However, given that big, lazy eating and big, old wine farms are a match made in heaven, the Boschendal carvery proved very popular.
Olivier tells a great story of the Cape’s recent history, and home cooks owe him thanks for sharing a brilliant recipe. Pepler’s malva pudding smells like the inside of dark Cape Dutch kitchens, coals, enamel baking trays and sweet wine. It’s a smell that seems to encompass hundreds of years of salty storms and sun on fruit. It’s a layered and balanced whiff of Cape history. From a flavour balance point of view, there’s something about the vinegar and the apricot jam that makes malva pudding keenly desirable, much more desirable than its close cousin sticky toffee pudding, say – a childishly sweet confection by comparison – or tipsy tart – I don’t love the texture of those dates – or Cape Brandy Pudding – unnecessarily heady, with the fumes of liquor challenging the natural perfume of the cake.
Whether or not Pepler’s pudding is as old as the Cape, it tastes like it is. Put another way, it’s a recipe that would – and by all appearances, will – stand the test of time.
Pepler died in September 2013 at the age of 87. Just weeks after her death Olivier wrote: “ … she was such a humble lady, I don’t think (she) was ever aware of the fame she created for this iconic South African dessert”.
Cook’s note: I followed Pepler’s recipe to the letter, except that I left the sponge in the oven longer than specified after removing the foil. I wanted what Werner calls “brulee edges” — and a sponge that could withstand a thorough soaking. I also reheated the pudding in the oven later. It didn’t mind a bit. The next day we microwaved the leftovers. This was no problem either.
Maggie Pepler’s malva pudding
Yield
This recipe serves 6 people.
Recipe ingredients
For the sponge:
- 1 cup flour, 125g
- 1 Tbs bicarbonate of soda
- 1 cup sugar 250g
- 1 egg
- 1 Tbs apricot jam
- 1 Tbs vinegar
- 1 Tbs melted butter
- 1 cup milk 250ml
For the sauce:
- ½ cup cream 125ml
- ½ cup milk 125ml
- 1 cup sugar 250g
- ½ cup hot water 125ml
- ½ cup butter 125g
Baking method
- Set oven at 180°C.
- Grease, with butter, an ovenproof glass or porcelain container approximately 30cm X 20cm X 5cm. Do not use an aluminium, enamel or any metal container.
- Cut a piece of aluminium foil to cover it while the pudding is in the oven and grease it well with butter on one side.
- Sift the flour and the bicarb into a bowl and stir in the sugar.
- In another bowl beat the egg very well and add the remaining ingredients [excluding those for the sauce] one by one, beating well between each addition.
- Using a wooden spoon beat the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well.
- Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish, cover with the foil, greased side down and bake for 45 minutes in the present oven until well risen and brown and for a further five minutes without the foil if not sufficiently brown. If not sufficiently baked the dessert will not take up all the sauce making it stodgy inside.
- When the pudding is almost done, heat the ingredients for the sauce, ensuring that you melt all the sugar and butter.
- When the pudding is done, remove from the oven, take off the foil and pour over the sauce. The pudding will take up all the sauce.
- Serve hot, warm or at room temperature, though warm is best, with a little thin cream or vanilla custard.
Wine pairing
Only the sweetest of wines won’t taste thin and sour in the presence of this dessert, and once again Muscadel comes to the rescue.
Precious Russell | 3 April 2024
I made this today. Have tried many different Malva pudding recipes but both hubby and I agreed that this one was the best by a mile!!
Made minor adjustments and added vanilla essence to the sauce. Had no cream on hand and used full cream milk. Turned out delicious still 😋
Dianne Sanson | 9 November 2023
Can this pudding be frozen?
Marina | 26 October 2023
Flour do we use normal or self – raising flour?
Hamilton McDermott | 16 November 2022
No Vanilla essence?
Louis Martins | 5 November 2022
This is absolutely the best malva pudding I tasted before. With my first try (only changed the bicarb from tbsp to tsp), the visitors who are malva pudding lovers, gave this pudding 11/10!! Wow, it really is simple and VERY delicious. Thank you for this recipe.
Helen | 30 August 2022
There is also another error.
ie. 1 cup of sugar is not 125gr
And also 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate and not 1 tablespoon!
Tessa | 10 July 2022
Yummy. I added 60ml old brown Sherry to the sauce. Amazing. Also used brown sugar
Tess | 10 July 2022
And cheap to make. Can’t understand why bought are so expensive
Jenny Gamble | 25 May 2022
I have made this twice now and both times was delicious but the centre has sunk in both times, is this perhaps too much bicarbonate?
Adele | 4 September 2022
Yes, it’s cooking soda, as said in above comm nys, one teaspoon for a cup is enough. Unless it’s to do with lightness of the flour used …
Lia Nel | 4 February 2022
Hi, it’s 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda to 1 tablespoon of vinegar.
Neil | 6 December 2021
This recipe was served on the buffet at Boschendal for donkeys years and was an absolute hit. They’d blend the mixture on low speed for ages and the pudding would be as light as air. Yummmmmm!!!
Charles King | 3 December 2021
I’m trying this for my daughter’s birthday
Nissi | 2 December 2021
I tried it only that the bicarbonate soda was too much so next time will reduce it
Amanda | 7 July 2021
This is a nice pudding. I only adjusted the soda and sugar because l do not have a sweet tooth. You nailed it. 👍👏
Naz | 4 July 2021
Gonna try it out
Lethube Phasha | 31 July 2021
You have to try it, oh is the best, you will never want store bought Malva ever.
Brenda Claassen | 24 May 2021
Just tried this recipe and it came out perfectly!
Kerry Joubert | 31 March 2021
There seems to be too much bicarb in the ingredients- is this a typo?
Nicole | 12 January 2022
I am also wondering the same thing? Mine has bubbled and after 35mins is still liquid. All other recipes are 1tspn?
Mulalo | 21 January 2022
Hi there
Did you try with the reduced bicarb? How did it turn out?
Liliane PD | 24 March 2021
Malva pudding always looks a rich brown in photos. I have nevr .achieved this colour using listed ingredients. Is there a secret ingredient which is never disclosed?
Christian Eedes | 25 March 2021
Hi Liliane, Sam Linsell of Drizzleanddip.com agrees that the pudding should have a deep colour and suggests that the simple solution is to bake it longer, ensuring that the sauce is more caramelised.
Daisy+Jones | 31 March 2021
Dear Liliane,
I did exactly what Christian suggests. I left the pudding in for longer, until the top was a deep honey brown and the edges were crispy.
Delia | 24 July 2021
The bicarbonate of soda also gives a brownish color to baked goods (according to my great-grandmother)
Jenny Gamble | 25 May 2022
Use brown sugar instead. I did and mine was a deep brown and absolutely yummy.
Silvana | 13 January 2023
I use brown spirit vinegar instead of white,
It comes out golden and delicious.
Melvyn Minnaar | 12 August 2020
Compliments and thanks for your perfectly-timed winter ‘research’. Indeed a great dish, also for being so gloriously humble. May I suggest a small glass of, say, 15-year-old brandy as accompaniment?