lemon pudding
I’ve had the Eating Well Dessert Cookbook for years, and I’m not sure if I’ve made anything from it. I’ve consulted it many times and have long admired its design: beautiful photos, clear and easy-to-read pages. Still, there was always an excuse. Oh, that calls for something I don’t have right now. Oh, that calls for coffee, so Scott won’t like it. Oh, 
that needs to chill — too late to make it now.
My original plan was to take care of two recipes yesterday: to make a pasta dish from another cookbook (upcoming) for dinner and a dessert from this book. But we got a late start on the day and found ourselves out and about running errands and too hungry to wait until we got home to eat. 
So we had a late lunch, which became an early dinner since we were never hungry enough afterward for a real meal. This happens to us sometimes on the weekends and I ought to have been prepared. Anyway, when we got home I decided that whatever the fate of the pasta dish, I would go ahead and make the lemon pudding.
I chose lemon pudding for a few reasons. The chief one is that it was ridiculously warm in New York the past few days — still is as I write, in fact — and I wanted something that would be light and refreshing. It also offered novelty: I’ve never made a lemon pudding before, and have made precious few puddings in general. And it looked simple, and didn’t add much to my shopping list.
I began by lightly buttering four ramekins. (The recipe says to oil them, but since there’s butter in the recipe I thought it wouldn’t do much harm to use it for the pans too and take a light hand.)¬† I also zested a lemon to yield two teaspoons of zest, then juiced it and one more to yield a quarter of a cup of juice. Then I separated three eggs and set aside the yolks. I mixed a fourth 
full egg with half a cup of sugar, one and a half tablespoons of softened butter, and the lemon zest, beating them together for about three minutes. I added three tablespoons of flour and mixed that in well, then added a cup of milk and the lemon juice.
At this point I pulled out the mixer beaters and washed them, and then beat the egg whites 
until they were stiff but not dry. I folded them into the lemon mixture and divided the resulting thick and liquidy batter into the ramekins, which I positioned in a baking pan. I carefully poured hot water into the baking pan so that it reached about two-thirds of the way up the ramekins. This is called a bain-marie; it serves the same purpose in the oven as using a double boiler does on the 
stovetop, ensuring that the food in the container is cooked gently. I maneuvered the pan into the oven and baked it for about half an hour. When the pudding had cooled a bit I lifted the ramekins out of the pan and let them finish cooling on a rack.
When we were ready for dessert, I sifted a bit of powdered sugar on top and brought the pudding 
out with spoons. The pudding was delightful, with a rich lemony taste and a smooth consistency. The tartness of lemon was counterbalanced by the sweetness, particularly the powdered sugar.
Verdict: Success. The only downside of this is that it requires you to heat the oven. But I could always make it ahead of time and pull it from the fridge to serve on a warm summer’s night. And if the current weather is any indication, we’re going to get a lot of those this year.