Childhood Snack: Pudding in a Bowl

Passengers, allow me to introduce you to my favorite childhood/teenagehood snack: Bowl Pudding （砵仔糕). Every time I see bowl pudding sold on the street, I always buy one, preferably with brown sugar (pictured above) because when they use white sugar, it tastes a bit sickeningly sweet. And always with red bean, because it gives it a contrasting texture with the smooth and... taut pudding, and yes, those two adjectives also describe a baby's bottom. Give me this instead of ice cream any day, and I'll be a happy camper.

The pudding is steamed and used to sell for HKD$3, the cheapest food item money could buy. The brown sugar bowl pudding is always sold out at the end of day, especially when students got off school at around 4pm. Perhaps due to its popularity but most likely to inflation, the bowl pudding is now sold for HKD$4. The pudding is scooped out of the ceramic bowl using the two bamboo sticks.

I lived in Chi Fu, a middle class residential area with a cutesy shopping mall. Nothing crazy, just your regular wet market, supermarket, hardware store, a few restaurants, all frequented by the same folks who live in the area. The shop that sells bowl pudding is at the wet market where they also sell curry fish balls, shrimp and pork dumplings, noodles and other Cantonese comfort foods. My cousin Gloria and I went to the same secondary school school, so we'd hop off the school bus and head over for after noon tea. Sometimes we'd go to McDonalds or Pizza Hut, but most of the time, I enjoyed bowl pudding or other non-chain store food. I tried bowl pudding at this place that claims to be the King of Bowl Puddings (砵仔王) which has chain stores all over HK, but it tasted so mass-produced, and it was over-steamed so the pudding was all mushy. Too bad these small, privately-owned eateries are slowly being gobbled up by boring, tasteless chain stores.

Bon voyage,
Jenny Cheng