Forgotten Pudding

Asked by duchna. Answered on 25th June 2013

Full question

I have some egg whites left and I've been thinking of making the Forgotten Pudding. I made it once a few months back and it came out perfect. However, I have a new oven and apparently all new ovens have this cooling system which cannot be turned off, so once I turn the oven off the cooling system automatically turns on and I am worried that the meringue won't be cooked/baked appropriately since the temperature will drop faster. How to make sure that the meringue actually comes out the way it's supposed to?

Our answer

Nigella's Forgotten Pudding (from Nigella Express) is a soft marshmallowy meringue that is cooked by putting it into a hot oven and immediately turning the oven off and leaving the pudding in the oven overnight to set. It does rely on the slow heat of the cooling oven for a period of time.

We understand that not all new ovens come with a fast cooling system but some of the fan models do. This does make it difficult to get the same "cooling oven" effect for meringues and the Forgotten Pudding. We wouid first suggest checking your oven handbook to see if has any sugestions on making meringues or pavlovas, which would require a slowly cooling oven.

Unfortunately we have not tried to make the pudding in a fast cooling oven, but most ovens will have cooled to room temperature after about 1 hour so if your oven has a very low setting (something like 50c or a gentle defrost setting) then you could turn the oven off for 15 minutes as soon as the pudding has been put in, then re-set it to 50c for 30 minutes then switch it off again and leave overnight. This may help to emulate the cooling effect of a regular oven. However we would emphasize that we have not tested this so cannot guarantee the results.