For the love of chocolate
WHEN HER YOUNGEST DAUGHTER TOOK UP COOKING, COUNTRY STYLE’S KYLIE IMESON TAUGHT HER THEIR FAMILY’S MOST CHERISHED RECIPE.
of home cooks found making three meals a day, every day during lockdown to be an exhausting chore. For Country Style’s Kylie Imeson, 44, it was the snack-making for her brood that wore her out. So she and her husband Mark Morrison, 46, asked their four children to step in and make a two-course dinner. But they discovered their youngest, Ally, 13, was stumped when it came to making dessert.
Kylie suggested her childhood favourite, her mother’s self-saucing chocolate pudding – but to her surprise, Ally had never had it. “I couldn’t believe I’d never made it for her,” says Kylie. Dianne Imeson, 63 (known as Ma Ma to her grandchildren), has owned the cookbook the recipe came from for almost 50 years. “The recipe came from the Kyogle Primary School cookbook,” she says. “I bought it at the fete when my youngest brother Geoffrey was still at school.”
Dianne has four brothers, and it was their appetite for sweets that prompted her to make the pudding for the first time. “When I got married in 1975 and moved in to our first flat in Kyogle, all my family came around for tea. I flicked through the book and decided to make it, and everyone loved it – so I just kept making it.”
When her daughter Kylie moved to London in 1998 for the traditional overseas stint, she copied the recipe for the chocolate self-saucing pudding from the worn cookbook’s light-blue paper, on which the recipes are all typewritten and stapled together. It was the first thing she cooked in her share house, doubling the quantities to cater for all her new friends. Of course, “they loved it just as much as we all did growing up,” remembers Kylie.
With the family tradition finally passed down to Ally, she decided to serve the pudding with raspberries and ice cream. “It was really yummy,” says Ally. “And it was a family recipe, which was nice in isolation when you can’t see people. It made me feel closer to Ma Ma.” And she’s not the youngest family member to keep the recipe alive: Ally’s cousin Elodie, five, also helped her dad make the pudding. He solemnly told her it was a “very secret recipe” – a fact 1970s-era Kyogle Primary School cooks might contest!
Sadly, the original cookbook can’t be found at present, lost in the chaos of Dianne’s house move back to her home stretch of northern NSW. “I’m hoping it’s in one of my unpacked boxes,” she says. Regardless of the original recipe’s whereabouts, the tradition continues.
MA MA’S CHOCOLATE SELF-SAUCING PUDDING
Serves 8
2¼ cups (335g) self-raising flour ¼ cup cocoa plus ¼ cup extra ¾ cup (165g) caster sugar 1½ cups (375ml) milk
90g butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla essence 1½ cups (330g) brown sugar cream or ice-cream and fresh
raspberries, for serving
Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fanforced). Butter a medium ovenproof dish (10-cup capacity). Place dish onto an oven tray.
Sift flour and cocoa into a large bowl; stir in sugar. Gradually whisk in milk, melted butter and vanilla until smooth. Spread into the prepared dish.
Combine brown sugar and extra cocoa in a small bowl. Sprinkle evenly over the flour mixture in the dish. Gently pour over 2 cups (500ml) of boiling water.
Bake for about 35–40 minutes or until pudding feels firm on the top.
Serve with cream or ice cream and raspberries.
SHARE YOUR FAMILY FAVOURITES
Do you have a recipe that has been passed down through generations of your family? Send it to us, the story behind it and a copy of a photograph of the relative who passed it on. Remember to include a telephone number. Email austcountrystyle@ aremedia.com.au or send a letter to Heirloom Recipe, Country Style, PO Box 4088, Sydney NSW, 1028.