Pouding Chômeur (Maple Poor Man’s Pudding)
- Preparation 15 min
- Cooking 50 min
- Servings 6
- Freezing Absolutely
Ads
🍁 What is pouding chômeur?
Pouding chômeur translates, more or less, to “unemployed man’s pudding.” It came out of Quebec during the Great Depression, when families were feeding everybody on flour, butter, sugar and whatever else was already in the cupboard. The trick was to pour a hot syrup into the dish first, drop a plain cake batter on top, and let the oven sort it out. Nobody was trying to invent a classic. They were trying to put dessert on the table for pennies. Ninety years later it is still the dessert every Quebec grandmother makes, and this is the maple version, the one I grew up on between my grandmother’s kitchen, my mother’s, and a few hundred trips to the sugar shack.
🔥 Why the maple syrup ends up as a sauce under the cake
This is the part that throws people the first time. You boil maple syrup with 35% cream, pour that hot liquid into the bottom of a 9 x 13 dish, then spoon the batter over it. In the oven the batter floats and sets on top while the syrup bubbles underneath and reduces. The bottom of the cake drinks it up and turns dense and caramelized. The top stays golden and light. Two textures out of one batter, and you never stirred them together.
Two rules and the dish takes care of itself. Do not overmix the batter, or you pull a loaf of bread out of that pan. And let it rest 20 minutes before you cut in, because the sauce is still thin and boiling when it comes out of the oven.
🍦 How I serve maple pouding chômeur
Warm, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting into it. That is the sugar shack way and I have never found better. Maple ice cream on a maple pudding cake, if you want the whole thing doubled up. Some people drizzle more syrup over the top. I don’t. It is sweet enough already and I would rather taste the cake.
One 9 x 13 feeds six, which makes it the dessert I pull out for a Sunday family supper or a cold winter brunch when everybody needs something warm.
Ads
Ads
🍯 Buy the darkest maple syrup you can find
Look for the grades labeled “dark, robust taste” or “very dark, strong taste.” That is where the actual maple flavor lives. The pale golden syrups are lovely on pancakes and they disappear completely in a dessert this rich. Any pure maple syrup does the job, and pure is the word that matters. If there is a sugar shack within driving distance of you, buy it there.
🥛 About the 35% cream
I use 35% cooking cream, what most American cartons call heavy cream. It gives the sauce that thick, glossy body. Table cream at 15% works too and the difference is smaller than you would think. Lactose-free cream behaves normally here.
🚨 The mistake everybody makes: the sauce boils over
Maple syrup and cream climb fast, in the saucepan and again in the oven. In the pan, use something heavy-bottomed and stay next to it. In the oven, slide a rimmed baking sheet onto the rack below the dish. That single move is the difference between dessert and forty minutes of scraping burnt sugar out of your oven.
🥄 Stir less than you think
When the milk mixture goes into the flour, stir until it is barely moistened, then stop. A few turns of the spoon. Lumps are fine. Keep going and you develop gluten, and gluten in a pudding cake gives you a dense loaf sitting in maple sauce.
⏰ The 20 minute rest is not optional
Straight out of the oven the sauce is still thin and moving. Give it 20 to 30 minutes on the counter. The syrup thickens, the cake keeps drinking it up from below, and the texture settles into what you actually came for. Patience pays.
🍽️ A 9 x 13 glass dish, and only that
Use a 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish. Smaller and the syrup climbs over the sides. Bigger and the batter spreads too thin to soak up anything. Glass, because you can watch the syrup darken at the bottom while it bakes and because it comes clean without a fight.
🇨🇦 The brown sugar version, and why it exists
Plenty of Quebec families make pouding chômeur with brown sugar instead of maple syrup, and historically that was the more common one: maple was the expensive ingredient back when this dessert was invented, brown sugar was not. It tastes like toffee rather than maple. It is a good dessert. It is a different dessert, and this page is the maple one.
🍦 What to serve with maple pouding chômeur
Vanilla ice cream on a warm square, and you are done. Maple ice cream if you want the maple doubled. Whipped cream works, and so does plain cold cream poured straight over the top. If you like this style of dessert, my Sortilège poor man’s pudding is the same idea with maple whisky liqueur in it, and my strawberry and rhubarb pudding cake is the summer version of the same trick.
Ads
For the maple syrup base
- 1 can (18 oz / 540 ml) pure maple syrup, the darkest you can find
- 3/4 cup (180 ml) heavy cream, 35%
For the batter
- 1 1/3 cups (330 ml) all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup (180 ml) sugar
- 3 teaspoons (15 ml) baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) salt
- 1/3 cup (80 ml) cold butter, diced
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- 3/4 cup (180 ml) milk
- 1 capful (about 1 teaspoon / 5 ml) vanilla extract
Ads
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Make the syrup: In a saucepan, bring the maple syrup and the cream to a boil, whisking constantly. Let it simmer about 5 minutes. Pour the hot syrup into a 9 x 13 inch (23 x 33 cm) baking dish. ⚠️ Warning: maple syrup and cream climb fast and boil over if the heat is too high. Use a heavy-bottomed saucepan and stay next to it.
- Make the batter: In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the cold butter and cut it in with a knife or your fingers until it breaks down into pea-sized pieces.
- In another bowl, combine the milk, the beaten egg and the vanilla. Pour it into the center of the dry ingredients and stir just enough to moisten. Do not overmix.
- Spoon the batter over the hot syrup, covering the whole surface.
- Bake in the center of the oven 45 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Let it rest 20 minutes before serving, so the syrup can thicken.
Pouding chômeur is a Quebec dessert: hot maple syrup boiled with cream goes into the dish first, a plain cake batter is spooned on top, and the whole thing bakes into a soft cake sitting in its own maple sauce. The name is French for “unemployed man’s pudding”, which is why English menus usually call it poor man’s pudding or, more descriptively, a maple pudding cake. It was born in Quebec during the Great Depression of the 1930s, made from pantry staples when there was nothing else.
Roughly “poo-DING shoh-MUR”. The ch is a soft sh, like in shoe, not a hard ch. The circumflex on the ô just lengthens the vowel. Nobody in Quebec will mind how you say it as long as you show up with a pan of it.
Yes, and it freezes better than most cakes because the sauce keeps it moist. Let it cool completely, cut it into portions, and wrap each one in foil or seal it in an airtight container. It holds up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the fridge, then reheat 1 to 2 minutes in the microwave or 10 to 15 minutes covered in a 350°F (180°C) oven. The syrup comes back to life.
A toothpick pushed into the center of the cake comes out clean. Count on 45 to 50 minutes at 350°F (180°C). The top should be golden and puffed, and the syrup should be bubbling around the edges of the dish. If the top still looks pale, give it another 5 minutes. Then let it rest 20 minutes before you serve it, no matter how good it smells.
Three things. Use a 9 x 13 inch dish with real sides, not a shallow pan. Put a baking sheet on the rack underneath to catch whatever escapes. And do not fill the dish more than two thirds of the way up: the syrup boils hard while it bakes and it needs somewhere to go. Leave a good inch of clearance at the top.
You can, and that version is actually the older one. Maple syrup was the costly ingredient when pouding chômeur was invented, so brown sugar was what most households used. Boiled with cream it makes a toffee-like sauce rather than a maple one. It is a legitimate Quebec dessert in its own right, but it is not the recipe on this page, which is built around dark maple syrup.
Warm, with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream melting into it. That is the sugar shack standard. Maple ice cream pushes it further if you want maple on maple. Whipped cream or plain cold cream poured over a warm square both work. Extra maple syrup on top is a common move, but the dessert is already sweet enough that I skip it.
Neige, from Cidrerie Milton, is what I pour with my maple pouding chômeur. It is an ice cider, which means the apples are left to freeze before pressing, and it comes out tasting of ripe apple, marmalade and applesauce. Those notes land right on top of the maple. What keeps it from being too much is the acidity, which cuts straight through the 35% cream. Two Quebec staples, maple and apple, closing out the meal together.
See the productThis brown ale from Brasseurs Avant-Garde holds its own against my maple pouding chômeur, which is not nothing. Maple syrup boiled with cream is sugar at full volume, and a light beer just vanishes under it. Mr Brown brings roasted malt, a hazelnut streak and a quiet 25 IBU bitterness that wipes the palate clean between bites. Serve it cool rather than cold, in a small glass.
See the productAds
Ads
Ads
Ads
Ads