this year i got over my… well it’s not a phobia, not even distaste really, but you know that icky feeling you get from handling library books? your fingertips seem dusty or grimy or… that sensation i just can’t describe, when there’s stuff in that gap between your nail and the top of your finger, and in the webbing of your fingers. you know? the way my hands feel right now even as i’m merely typing about it.

argh!!

um. so i’ve been taking the kid to the library. sometimes to get picture books, and sometimes for organised storytime. some days i find the latest issue of a glossy magazine on the rack, with a bit less dust or grime to get in-between my fingers.

recently, i borrowed an only slightly dogeared copy of “delicious.“, from june of last year. in the first few pages, there was a half page on max brenner and his “chef’s own” recipe for hot chocolate, which pretty much amounted to: 1 tablespoon of max brenner hot chocolate mix, 1 cup of milk, marshmallows. dissolve chocolate powder into hot milk. if you want a richer drink, add more chocolate.

really.

but i got past it without too much derisive snorting, and came upon a recipe for sticky lemon pudding. in the photograph was a vintage enamel bowl on a waffle-weave tea towel. in the bowl was a spongey yellow cake with a golden brown top and a puddle of lemon curd at the bottom. for almost two weeks i thought about making this pudding. and then for almost one week after that, things kept happening to postpone the making of pudding. but reading of santos‘s lemony l.a. adventures only galvanised my intentions. yesterday afternoon, with the magazine’s due date fast approaching, i thought i should just do it.

it turned out to be one of those recipes where the end result looks exactly like the picture, except that because my pudding bowls are smaller than the prescribed size, i had two! it even tasted like its name: the cakey bit had a slightly chewy, slightly sticky mouth feel, and the tart lemon flavour (i cut down the sugar in the recipe) went all the way through the cake to the curdy bit below. YUM.

howzzat? an uppercase YUM in a lowercase blog. the recipe is from jill dupleix, and goes a little something like this.