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Sweet · In Afrikaans: Malvapoeding

Malva pudding

A heavy, dark sponge with apricot jam and vinegar, drowned in a cream-and-syrup sauce the moment it comes out of the oven. The sauce has to go on while the cake is hot — once it cools, it will not soak in.

The name probably comes from Afrikaans — either from malvalekker, a marshmallow, or from the Malvasia wine it was served with. What is certain is that the vinegar is not a mistake: it reacts with the bicarbonate and gives the crumb the sponginess it needs to take up the sauce.

Prep
20 min
On the fire
30 min
Serves
8
Effort
easy
Malva pudding with sauce in a baking dish
Jon Mountjoy · CC BY 2.0

When it goes on

Right at the end

Pudding in the last of the heat — or something that needs no fire at all.

Equipment: Oven

This line

Trekboers and Voortrekkers1652 to about 1900

The three-legged pot, sausage as a way of keeping meat, bread without an oven.

Method

  1. Heat the oven

    180 °C, and butter a dish of about 30 cm. It has to be deep enough — the pudding takes up close to its own volume in sauce.

  2. Butter, sugar, jam, vinegar

    Melt butter, sugar, apricot jam and vinegar together over low heat and stir smooth. Let it cool to hand warm.

  3. Mix the batter

    Combine flour, bicarbonate and salt. Stir into the butter mixture alternately with the milk, then beat in the eggs. The batter is thin; that is correct.

  4. Bake

    Pour into the dish and bake for 30 minutes, until dark brown and a skewer comes out clean. It should be dark, not golden.

  5. Make the sauce

    In the last ten minutes put all the sauce ingredients in a pot, bring to the boil and simmer gently for five minutes.

  6. Hot onto hot

    Take the pudding out and immediately prick it all over with a fork. Pour the boiling sauce over slowly — all of it has to soak in. Both have to be hot, or the sauce just sits on top.

  7. Wait ten minutes

    Let it settle, then serve warm with cold custard or ice cream. The contrast is half the pudding.

Tips

  • Too little sauce is the usual mistake. The pudding should swim in it and absorb all of it, otherwise it is just a dry sponge.
  • At the fire it works in a cast-iron pot with coals on the lid, as for potbrood — then it takes 35 to 45 minutes and wants closer watching.
  • The vinegar cannot be tasted and cannot be left out. It is why the crumb takes up so much.

Malva pudding is the dessert every South African family has and nobody thinks is remarkable. It is made from things that are always in the house, and it is close to impossible to ruin.

The two things that make it work both sound wrong: vinegar in a cake batter and a sauce built on nearly half a pound of butter. The vinegar works with the bicarbonate and gives the crumb its coarse, spongy structure. The sauce is not an accompaniment, it is the second half of the pudding.

And the two have to meet hot. A cooled sponge will not take the sauce; it stands in the dish instead of disappearing into the crumb.

Where it comes from

Where the word comes from
Afrikaans, origin disputed · Literally „malva pudding“ Two derivations circulate: from *malvalekker* (marshmallow) or from Malvasia wine.

Malva pudding is Cape Dutch home baking, and one of those puddings you do not order but are handed. The batter contains two ingredients that sound wrong in a cake: apricot jam and vinegar. Both are deliberate — the jam brings fruit and moisture, the vinegar works with the bicarbonate and opens the crumb.

The sources do not agree on the name. One derivation takes it from malvalekker, the Afrikaans word for marshmallow, meaning the soft texture. The other names Malvasia wine, which the pudding is said to have been served with. Neither is documented, and anyone presenting one as settled has not read the other.

What makes the pudding happens after baking. The hot cake is drowned in a syrup of cream, butter and sugar and soaks it up. That is why malva is not a dry cake with sauce beside it but a soaked one — and why it is often better on the second day.

At a braai it comes out of the oven and stands on the table while the coals go out outside. To make it at the fire, use the cast-iron pot and put coals on the lid.

Sources for this section

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Total time
40 min
Serves
6
Heat of the coals
medium
Equipment
Hinged grid