Malva pudding in a potjie

Light the fire. You need fewer coals than when braaing steak, but you’ll need a steady supply of coals once the pudding is baking.

Use butter to grease your no.10 flat-bottomed baking potjie. 

Sift the flour and the bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl and stir in the sugar (you don’t need to sift the sugar).

In another mixing bowl, whisk the egg very well. 

Now add the jam, vinegar, butter and milk, whisking well after adding each ingredient.

Add the wet ingredients of step 5 to the dry ingredients of step 4 and mix well with a wooden spoon.

Pour the batter into the potjie, put on the lid and bake for 50 mins by placing some coals underneath the potjie and some coals on top of the lid. 

Don’t add too much heat, as burning is a big danger. 

There is no particular risk in having too little heat and taking up to 1 hour to get the baking done, so rather go too slow than too fast. 

During this time, you can add a few fresh hot coals to the bottom and top of the potjie whenever you feel the pudding is losing steam. 

After roughly 50 mins of baking, it should be well risen and brown.

When the pudding has been baking in the potjie for about 40 mins (about 10 mins before it is done), heat all the ingredients for the sauce in a small potjie over medium coals.

Keep stirring to ensure that the butter is melted and the sugar is completely dissolved, but don’t let the mixture boil. 

If you want a (slightly) less sweet pudding, use half a cup of sugar and a full cup of hot water for the sauce, instead of the other way round as per the ingredients list. 

After about 50 mins of baking, insert a skewer into the middle of the pudding to test whether it’s done. 

If the skewer comes out clean, it’s ready.

Take the pudding off the fire and pour the sauce evenly over it.

Serve the malva pudding warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, a dollop of fresh cream or a puddle of vanilla custard.

A good way to keep it hot is to put it near the fire, but not too close – after doing everything right, we don’t want it to burn now.

Recipe extract from Jan Braai’s Red Hot cookbook, published by Bookstorm.