Apple pudding with rummy sauce

Dessert for breakfast, anyone? I suspect this dish is meant to be a dessert, but it made a wonderful warm winter Sunday breakfast. It's like having apple bread pudding with maple syrup, only with rum sauce instead.


Apple pudding with rummy sauce

Adapted from “Favorite Recipes from Great Midwest Cooks,” a Midwest Living cookbook that's a source of several favorites.

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1¼ teaspoon nutmeg, divided

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter, divided

1½ cups sugar, divided

1 egg

4 cups chopped apples, about 4 medium

¼ cup chopped pecans

¼ cup light cream

1 tablespoon rum (I used a deep golden variety)

½ teaspoon vanilla

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine flour, baking soda, ¾ teaspoon nutmeg and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat ¼ cup butter for 30 seconds to cream it. Add 1 cup sugar and beat until well combined. Add egg and beat well. Mix in dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in apples and pecans. 

(At this stage you will look at the mixture in the bowl, double check the recipe, then look doubtfully back in the bowl, and triple check the recipe, because it looks fairly implausible that it can turn into something. It’s more apples than anything else, and there’s very little moisture evident. But relax, those apples release their moisture and somehow it all turns out.)

Spread into a greased 9-inch square baking pan. Bake for about 50 minutes or until golden. This is a pudding, so it will be moist; the toothpick test doesn’t apply here.

Meanwhile, melt remaining ¼ cup butter in a small sauce pan. Add ½ cup sugar and the cream. Cook over medium low heat and bring to a boil. (Make sure your pan is has at least twice the capacity as your ingredients, as it will boil up like candy.) Reduce heat and cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and whisk in rum, ½ teaspoon nutmeg and the vanilla.

Serve pudding warm with rum sauce over the top.

Rating: This could be called apple pudding with yummy sauce. By itself, I don’t know that the pudding is anything much to write home about. But the warm, moist pudding in combination with that sauce is outstanding. I’m pretty sure that sauce is going to have to make an appearance this summer over some homemade vanilla ice cream. And it would make a killer stand-in for maple syrup over French toast.