Mad scientists: matcha self-saucing pudding.

Warning: this post contains images that might be offensive to some readers.

 

12 year old and I were plotting. We needed pudding and we needed it stat! Problem – there was no pudding in the house and it was nearly bed-time for one of us.

“We could make one,” I said, reaching for my phone and opening up a search engine, “I’ve heard about self-saucing puddings that you can make really quickly in a coffee mug in the microwave.”

“Can we do that?” he said.

“Why not?”

We found this recipe that fulfilled all our requirements. It was a pudding, it could be done in the microwave. It was fast. Also it was about a mother cooking with her son, so it seemed appropriate.

“I’ll check if we have all the ingredients,” said 12 year old.

He pulled out the SR flour from the pantry, ran to get the milk from the fridge, grabbed the sugar bowl, reached for…

No cocoa powder.

But we did have the matcha latte left over from making the jasmine and matcha delice.

“That would be awesome,” he said.

We mixed it up, poured on the boiling water, and put it in the microwave, carefully setting the timer for 30 seconds. Then we watched through the glass as the mug moved around.

After the ping, we opened the door and peered into the mug.

“Doesn’t look like much has happened,” he said.

“Needs a bit more time,” I suggested, “10 or 20 seconds?”

“15,” he compromised.

But at 10 seconds, the mixture started to rear its ugly head over the rim of the mug. I hit the stop button and took it out, poked it with a finger.

“Seems cooked. Now we have to tip it into a bowl.”

We inverted the mug over the bowl. The pudding fell into it with a wet thunk.

There was a moment’s horror and a whisper of “It looks like someone sneezed” before we both started laughing. I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard. I had to cling to the bench-top to stop myself from falling over.

When people talk about primordial slime, they are probably thinking about something that looks like this.

 

I have never seen anything quite as grotesque in my kitchen before. It was like a parody of everything that I aspire to as an amateur baker.

“Who’s going to taste it first?” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“I will.”

I took a teaspoon and pushed it into the pudding. It was definitely pudding. It had definitely self-sauced. A trickle of pond-weed coloured liquid ran over the sides.

“It probably looks better when you use cocoa,” he said.

“Undoubtedly.”

But it tasted fine. Better than fine. I had some. He had some. We gave the rest to 16 year old who didn’t give a damn about the fact that it looked like a massive lump of snot. He finished it off and licked the bowl clean.

At bed-time, 12 year old was in a good mood.

“Did you clean your teeth?” I asked, “Get all that green stuff off them?”

“I did, “ he said, then, “That was really fun!”

“You have to experiment," I say in my best parental-fountain-of-wisdom-voice, “That’s how you learn.”

“And tomorrow, can you buy some cocoa?”

“First chance I get, darling. First chance I get.”