Holiday Corn Pudding

I’m sitting at the kitchen table after putting an English plum pudding on the stove to steam for 8 hours. Plum pudding is not my tradition but the process and ingredients are vaguely familiar: I grew up eating brown bread steamed in a can. The brown bread uses 1:1:1 wheat, corn and rye flour plus almost as much molasses along with the dried fruit (raisins). The plum pudding uses wheat flour and white bread crumbs with suet, brandy, dried fruits, apple, and candied citrus peel (home made) and some molasses. Just a few modifications to the fruit and molasses laced brown bread and the fruit and molasses laden plum pudding could produce a more “home grown” (at least in my yard and much of the Americas) holiday corn pudding.
Anybody make something like this who’s willing to share their secret family recipe?

I must say I was expecting something other than a Plum Pudding or Steamed Brown Bread.

I was expecting a festive corn pudding such as this one though decorated with red and green something:

https://permies.com/t/142559/kitchen/Brazilian-Corn-Pudding


I believe my sister-in-law also made a Corn Pudding for Thanksgiving and Christmas Dinners.

My only secret recipe is the thread on Potato Salad and others mentioned my secret ingredients.

Tamales are just individually-portioned “puddings” out of nixtamal or cornmeal.  I have seen Native American recipes for sweet tamales that use the liquid from boiling dried fruit as as the flavoring for tamales.  And then there’s standard fresh corn “tamales de elote ”

Great corn pudding thread Anne: thanks for the link!
Pudding seems to have multiple meanings ranging from the gooey, boxed stuff that I grew up with to moist cake-like creations, like traditional plum puddings, that range from sweet to savory. I learned a lot from Wikipedia's pudding entry. I'm thinking about the dense cake-type pudding to stand in for the molded Christmas pudding that's popular in UK.
As for a local sweet green and red decor on or in the holiday corn pudding, how about:
Candied Jalapeños
Clean, top, remove pith and seeds with a grapefruit spoon, then slice:
1/2 lb green jalapeños
1/2 lb red ripe jalapeños
In a heavy 2 qt pan, bring to boil:
2 c sugar
1 c water
Add the sliced jalapeños and simmer uncovered until simple syrup mostly evaporates (about an hour). Using a straining spoon, spread the jalapeño slices onto a parchment lined sheet pan and let dry.
If making candied jalapeños in summer, pack the peppers in airtight bags and freeze until needed in winter.

Mk Neal, you have really enlarged the idea of puddings with your post. Tamales are not in the Wikipedia entry and they should be: a steamed individual pudding: brilliant!

Speaking of tamales, when we lived in Mexico the only tamales that were available to buy were sweet fruit tamales.

These sweet tamales were sold in a big shop called a Tamaleria.

That was a treat that we only went there once.

There were rows on rows of different tamales of all kinds of fruit.

That was so long ago that I don't remember what flavor I had.

Here is a recipe I found for Pineapple, Raisins, and Coconut:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/261683/sweet-tamales-with-pineapple-and-coconut/

This one uses dried hibiscus flowers which are made into a jam:

https://www.thespruceeats.com/sweet-tamales-5205570


My dear hubby and I had a tradition of having tamales sometimes for Thanksgiving and Christmas, especially when we were at our off-grid cabin in West Texas.

Sweet tamales sound ideal, and yet the variations continue!
Thinking about enlarging the scale from individual lovely sweet tamales toward a larger presentation, I came across this fascinating article about corn pone with a few references to Christmas. Unlike dense puddings and tamales, these recipes don’t have suet or lard in them. Yet they sound more like a large tamale with a little molasses. Here’s a little excerpt from the must-read essay,
"Hannah Mary's Corn Pone," by Bernard L. Herman (illustrations by Nate Beaty):

…Hannah Mary made what she called a “corn pone,” and it was huge. [I]t was certainly more than a foot round and about six, seven inches deep. I don’t know exactly how she made it, but I know it took cornmeal and molasses and water. I don’t know what else she put in it, but I know she baked it. She had an old cookstove range that was wood burning or coal burning, but she would bake it probably for about six hours. And she used to make just one and she would sell it in chunks . . . We didn’t get it every week, but when we bought it, we would always get a quarter of it, and, boy, was it good! You cut it in slices and then either steamed it with lots of butter or you cut it in slices and kind of sautéed it on each side and had it with eggs and bacon. That was good!

Recipes and cooking processes are included in the wonderful article.

Oh, this is so not what I thought it was going to be (which was something along the lines of a savory, scalloped corn pudding I remember having at school as a kid, once), but so much more fun! I love the idea of the candied jalapeños. Maybe cinnamon, with dried/candied pineapple, mango, guava, star fruit (what a lovely garnish this would be!), or soursop...

Added to a Mexican themed holiday celebration, it would be the 'star' of the show!

Carla, maybe you are thinking of “spoon bread”?  I don’t have a recipe but I bet you could find one if you search spoon bread.

I used to make New Mexico spoon bread which had creamed corn, oil, cornmeal, milk, eggs, probably baking powder, that much is probably pretty standard spoon bread, but the New Mexico version also has chopped roasted (and peeled) green chilies, and grated cheese.  Very delicious…. and probably even better if you used dry masa instead of corn meal.

Another not so sweet corn dish I remember is corn fritters.  A friend’s mother used to make them… corn in a stiff batter, fried, served with butter and syrup like pancakes, eaten with a fork, but if a person doesn’t want sweet, I bet corn fritters would be delicious with salsa and cheese, and green chilies!

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Carla, maybe you are thinking of “spoon bread”?  I don’t have a recipe but I bet you could find one if you search spoon bread.

I used to make New Mexico spoon bread which had creamed corn, oil, cornmeal, milk, eggs, probably baking powder, that much is probably pretty standard spoon bread, but the New Mexico version also has chopped roasted (and peeled) green chilies, and grated cheese.  Very delicious…. and probably even better if you used dry masa instead of corn meal.

Another not so sweet corn dish I remember is corn fritters.  A friend’s mother used to make them… corn in a stiff batter, fried, served with butter and syrup like pancakes, eaten with a fork, but if a person doesn’t want sweet, I bet corn fritters would be delicious with salsa and cheese, and green chilies!

Green chilies make everything better!

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Carla, maybe you are thinking of “spoon bread”?  I don’t have a recipe but I bet you could find one if you search spoon bread.

I used to make New Mexico spoon bread which had creamed corn, oil, cornmeal, milk, eggs, probably baking powder, that much is probably pretty standard spoon bread, but the New Mexico version also has chopped roasted (and peeled) green chilies, and grated cheese.  Very delicious…. and probably even better if you used dry masa instead of corn meal.

Another not so sweet corn dish I remember is corn fritters.  A friend’s mother used to make them… corn in a stiff batter, fried, served with butter and syrup like pancakes, eaten with a fork, but if a person doesn’t want sweet, I bet corn fritters would be delicious with salsa and cheese, and green chilies!

Hi,  Thekla! Ido enjoy a good spoon bread, but that's not the one I was thinking of. The one we did in school - all the way back in c. November '75, lol - was a Thanksgiving project we did, slicing the corn off the cobs, and was supposed to be a New England style recipe that had been passed down a couple hundred years. Since everyone was taking part in it, we each only got to do a little bit, so I don't remember what all was in it, and apparently, my mom thought it was too much like work, and tossed the recipe. I know there were eggs in it, but not enough to really bind it much, saltine crackers crumbled on top, a bit of salt, lots of black pepper, and the only 'veggie' in it was corn. I've sporadically hunted for it, for years, but without any luck.

Terrific selections everyone! Seeking out more fodder for the old-world & new-world pudding mash-up, here's an unusual find from the family of Frida Kahlo. This sounds like a corn-based Christmas pudding that could be filled with most any homegrown candied and/or dried fruits and nuts. It is baked in a ring mold like (Anne's Brazilian pudding) rather than steamed in something tall. This recipe uses corn kernels rather than dried corn:

[Sweet] CORN PUDDING
12 T / 190g butter
1 C sugar / 190g sugar
7 to 8 cups / 1k corn kernels, preferably a few days old
1/2 cup / 110 ml milk
5 T / 50g flour
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
5 eggs separated
1 pound / 450g of chopped candied fruit and nuts (pineapple, angelica, lemon, dates and pine nuts)
Cream the butter and sugar. Puree the corn kernels with the milk. Sift the flour with the baking powder and salt. Beat the egg yokes the the flour until well mixed. Throughly combine the butter, corn, egg [and fruit, nut] mixtures.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold into the corn mixture. Butter a baking dish or ring mold. Fill with the batter and bake in a preheated 350F /175C degree oven for 45 - 50 minutes until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Recipe from, Frida’s Fiestas, Recipes and Reminiscences of Life with Frida Kahlo, ISBN 0517592355, P. 54:

I have read that in the South (US), it is a tradition to have Corn Pudding at Thanksgiving.

Probably one like I mentioned that my sister-in-law brought on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

All I remember about that corn pudding was that it had whole-kernel corn in it.

At our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, we always had too many foods to try so I really don't remember what the corn pudding tasted like.