Use your Instant Pot to make this to-die-for malva pudding, a dense, spongy, caramelized cake of South African origin served with a brown sugar cream sauce.
The name is weird. There is no denying it. Malva pudding. Is it named after a person, like pavlova? Or does it refer to the dessert’s unique spongy texture? A South African dessert of Cape Dutch origin, malva pudding might be so named because malva is the Afrikaans world for marshmallow. And while there are no actual marshmallows in malva pudding, it is sticky, sweet and dense.
Today, malva pudding is South Africa’s favorite dessert and it is a staple on restaurant dessert menus there. Although when I asked my friend Rowena – whose family emigrated from South Africa when she was a little girl – about it, neither she nor her parents had ever heard of it. That may be because while malva pudding seems to be ubiquitous in South Africa now, it did not really become popular until the 1980’s, as this article from Food52 explains.
Like most Americans, I first encountered a recipe for malva pudding quite recently in the charming, sort-of-Jewish cookbook Jack’s Wife Freda, from the Greenwich Village restaurant of the same name. One half of the couple that owns Jack’s Wife Freda is from a Jewish South African family – just like my friend Rowena – and was fed malva pudding as a child by his doting grandmother – the eponymous Freda. The restaurant has served malva pudding to baffled New Yorkers since 2012.
Interestingly, one of 2016’s must-have cookbooks, Everything I Want to Eat by the chef of LA’s SQRL, Jessica Koslow, also included a recipe for malva pudding. Is malva pudding having a moment? Some peope would say that malva pudding’s moment here in the U.S. began in 2006 when Oprah’s former chef Art Smith served it for dessert at the first Christmas dinner for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy. But two cookbook sightings in as many years is surely a new level of fame for this humble dessert.
When I read the recipe in Jack’s Wife Freda for malva pudding — and subsequently went down the malva pudding rabbit hole — I had two thoughts. One, that malva pudding sounded delicious: achingly sweet and sticky and caramelized, like sticky toffee pudding without all the weird dates. (Why does sticky toffee pudding have dates in it?) And two, that the recipe might be a perfect candidate for conversion to an Instant Pot recipe.
Why would one want to bake a cake in the Instant Pot? It’s not so much the speed — which is the usual benefit of cooking in the Instant Pot — but rather the texture that one can achieve by steaming a cake instead of baking it. For a cake intended to be moist, sticky, and pudding-like, such as a malva pudding, steaming is far superior to baking in the oven, which can cause cakes to dry out. And steaming under pressue is exactly when an electric pressure cooker like an Instant Pot does.
Nailing this recipe took me at least four tries. Possibly five. I lost count. First, of course, I had to bake a malva pudding in the oven so I would know what it was supposed to look and taste like. Then, I set about converting the recipe for the Instant Pot. Several attempts to make an Instant Pot malva pudding in a six-inch springform pan came to nothing: the middle was still not cooked even after 50 minutes at high pressure.
I then decided to bake individual malva puddings in ramekins to speed up the cooking time as well as avoid an underdone center. Also, individual desserts are darling and provide built-in portion control.
It took several more tries using the ramekins to nail down the timing, but when I finally figured it out, I was triumphant. Instant Pot steamed malva puddings have a moist, dense interior and a delightfully caramelized top. Soaked in a brown sugar cream sauce, these pudding-like little cakes are as decadent and sinful as a fancy restaurant dessert yet so, so easy to make.
I stand by all my recipes. I really do. But sometimes I know I have really nailed something, and this is one of those times. Just make these. Trust me.
Ingredients
- 1 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 TB butter, melted
- 1 tsp white wine or apple cider vinegar
- 1 TB apricot jam
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup whole milk
- 3/4 cup cream
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 4 TB (2 oz or 1/2 stick) butter
- Pinch salt
- Splash vanilla extract
- Whipped cream or creme fraiche for serving
Instructions
- Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the egg and sugar on medium speed until lightened in color, 3 minutes.
- Add the melted butter, vinegar, jam and vanilla and mix until combined.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients, until combined, scraping down the sides as necessary.
- Whisk or stir the batter by hand as necessary to incorporate all the ingredients and ensure that there are no lumps of flour.
- Grease six 6 or 8-ounce ceramic ramekins. Pour approximately four ounces of batter into each ramekin.
- Place the rack inside the inner pot of the Instant Pot and add two cups water. Place three ramekins on the rack and stack the remaining three ramekins on top on the bottom three.
- Select Manual and cook the puddings on high pressure for 25 minutes. Allow the pressure to release naturally for ten minutes, then release the pressure manually.
- While the puddings are cooking, prepare the sauce. Combine the cream, brown sugar, butter, salt and vanilla in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from heat but keep warm until the puddings are done.
- When the cooking cycle is complete, remove the three ramekins on the top. If the ramekins that were on bottom seem undercooked, leave them in the Instant Pot and cook for an additional five minutes on high pressure.
- Poke holes in the warm cakes with a skewer. Slowly pour a small amount of sauce over each cake, allowing it to absorb before adding more. If the sauce begins to pool on top, stop.
- To serve, turn each cake out into a shallow bowl or rimmed plate and ladle more sauce around the bottom.
- Garnish each cake with a dollop of whipped cream or creme fraiche as desired.
- (Keep extra cakes in their ramekins. Reheat prior to serving.)
