It was no doubt intended for drinks, but with two oak shelves and brass wheels, to me it looked like a perfect pudding trolley. It was also €150 and being used as a display for an enormous number of small things at a flea market. A good thing, too, otherwise I might have brought it home instead of the chair we actually needed. I regretted my decision, though; while I’m sure it wasn’t an Osvaldo Borsani bar trolley, it damned well looked like one. So I went back a few days later, only to find it with a “reserved” sign. Now I feel regret, and resentment towards the stranger with my trolley.
This movable cart would have finally allowed me to recreate my fantasy pudding trolley, a cross between the Ballymaloe trolley in Myrtle Allen’s book – with Irish apple cake, strawberry shortcake, chocolate ice-cream and iced chocolate oranges – and the trolley that might be wheeled between the aisles of a restaurant in Torino or Novara, with an urn of zabaione, plump sandwich biscuits, peach halves with almond middles, pineapple fans and a gleaming bonet.
Prepared with milk, eggs, sugar, cocoa or chocolate, amaretti, maybe rum and cooked in a bain-marie, bonet – bunet in the Piedmontese dialect – is part of the soft dessert family that includes custards and flans. Like its kindred dishes, white bonet alla monferrina, which predates the arrival of chocolate in Europe, and creme caramel, bonet is baked in a caramel-lined tin. Inverted after cooking, the tin gives the caramel to the pudding, providing it with a glossy top and a syrupy sauce. Incidentally, according to 1783’s Vocabolario Piemontese, written by a doctor called Maurizio Pipino, it is the berretto- (hat-) shaped copper baking dish that gives bonet its name.
Like creme caramel, bonet is useful because it can be made and baked in a bain-marie in advance, either using small individual tins or a single larger one. In his Companion to Food, Alan Davidson notes that one reason these puddings occupied such a large part of European restaurant dessert menus in the late 20th century was convenience: many could be prepared and kept until needed. Another reason, of course, is their unobtrusive goodness. As with creme caramel, bonet can be inverted in advance. But I prefer waiting until it’s nearly time to eat before dipping the base of the tin in hot water, which heats the caramel and loosens the custard, making it easier to invert on to a plate: be careful, though, because it can be a bit of a bellyflop. Last-minute inverting also means that while it may have cooled, the brief dip both warms the caramel and gives the custard a gentle wobble.
When the time is right, run a knife all around the edge of the bonet, dip the base of the tin into boiling water, then carefully invert this perfect festive pudding on to a serving plate.
Put the serving plate and a bowl of extra amaretti on your real or imaginary trolley, and wheel it to the table.
Bonet (chocolate and amaretti set pudding)
Prep 30 min
Cook 30 min
Serves 6-8
4 large eggs
6 tbsp caster sugar
2 heaped tbsp cocoa powder
60g finely crushed amaretti biscuits
600ml whole milk
For the caramel
3 tbsp caster sugar
Heat the oven to 150C (130C fan)/300F/gas 2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, cocoa and amaretti to a thick paste, gently stir in the milk, then leave to sit.
Put a 22-24cm baking tin in the oven to heat up (this will help the caramel spread later). Put the three tablespoons of caster sugar for the caramel into a small pan on a medium heat and leave to melt. Once it is liquid, add three teaspoons of water and bubble until it becomes a caramel. Working quickly, get the warm tin out of oven, pour in the caramel and tilt the tin untilit completely covers the base in a thin layer.
Pour the milk mixture into the caramel-lined tin and lift it into a second larger baking tray. Pour cold water into the second tray until it comes halfway up the sides of the bonet tin, then bake for 30 minutes, until the bonet is set (but wobbly). Lift out and leave to cool.
Run a knife around the edge of the bonet, dip the base of the tin into boiling water, then invert on to a serving plate. Serve with cream.
• This article was amended on 18 December 2023. The recipe method in an earlier version stated that only three teaspoons of caster sugar should be used to make the caramel, when it should be three tablespoons, as per the ingredients list. The dimensions of the baking tin have also been clarified.
