Those Cakes We Like ... Are Blowing Off Some Steam

Happy New Year, fellow Wonkers, Cats and Kittens, and all the rest of you critters.

Now the party season is over we have to find a way to trudge through January, the longest month of the entire year. But fear not, for I am here to help you! The recipe I’m about to share with you has a very long history; it features in one of the earliest printed cookbooks, published in 1615, Coventry Contentments, or, The English Huswife by Gervase Markham. This recipe has been a staple of British baking ever since, featuring in cookbooks by the likes of Mrs Beeton (1861) and Paul Hollywood (2014). I refer, of course, to the humble steamed sponge pudding.

The steamed sponge pudding of today is vastly different to the recipe featured in The English Huswife, although similar versions still exist. Initially, a steamed sponge pudding was a suet pudding encased in a cloth and cooked in the same pot used for the meat. (Suet: “the raw, hard fat of beef, lamb or mutton found around the loins and kidneys.”) By the time of Mrs Beeton it had evolved into several different forms, including a treacle or syrup pudding, which Mrs Beeton considered only suitable for the nursery, or perhaps a simple family dinner. At this point the sponge was still made with suet, but now had its own dedicated pudding basin. I will not be giving you a suet based recipe today, mainly as I find them more temperamental. Instead, I will give you the recipe I grew up eating. Sadly, steamed sponges are less fashionable now, which is a real shame as there’s just something special about their simplicity. They are delicious, versatile desserts, a hit of stodgy sweetness that is guaranteed to improve your mood. Say what you want about British cuisine — believe me, I’ve heard it all — but the one thing we really excel at is sweet, stodgy comfort food. Personally, I blame it on the weather.

If you want to follow this recipe exactly then there will need to be a little bit of preparation done beforehand. I’m going to go through how to make a treacle sponge pudding — please note that this pudding does not actually use treacle. Instead, it uses a distant cousin of treacle: golden syrup. You can buy golden syrup at Wegmans, Walmart online, Amazon (Wonkette cut link), and possibly Whole Foods. Do not confuse this for Golden Eagle Syrup, the two are NOT the same — there is no corn syrup in golden syrup. If you decide to shop for it you need to look for a green and gold tin or plastic bottle labelled ‘Lyles Golden Syrup’, it has a picture of a dead lion on the front of it –  don’t ask.

If you can’t find Lyles Golden Syrup, or you don’t want to shop for it, fear not, you can make it yourself. Golden Syrup is made from three simple ingredients: sugar, water, and a slice of lemon. You will need a food thermometer though.

Golden Syrup

3 tablespoons water

100 g or ½ cup sugar

280 ml or 1 ¼ cups boiling water

500 g or 2 ½ cups sugar

1 lemon slice

Mix the 3 tablespoons of water and smaller portion of sugar together in a saucepan, bring to a simmer over a low-medium heat until it caramelises at a temperature of 350 F (175 C).

Slowly, and very carefully, add the boiling water. Stand as far back as you can safely manage as this step involves a lot of very hot steam, and the potential for some splashing. Now add the rest of your sugar and bring the mixture to a low simmer. Pop in your lemon slice and continue to simmer for around 45 minutes. Remove your lemon and pour the golden syrup into a sterilised glass jar.

You’ll have a lot more syrup than you’ll need for this recipe. Don’t worry, it will store almost indefinitely so long as it’s kept in a cool, dry place, and I will be giving you future recipes that you’ll be able to use this with.

Now, on to the main event.

This recipe is for individual puddings, and will make three or four, depending on the size of your ramekins.

This is a high carbohydrate dessert, there’s no escaping that. It comes in at 108.6 g of carbs if you make three servings, or 81.5 g if you make four servings (please note, this is only for the sponge).

Equipment

Mixing bowl, wooden spoon  & electric hand whisk (or stand mixer)

Deep sided oven tray

Oven-proof dessert ramekins or individual pudding basins

Baking paper or foil

String

Your Ingredients

150 g butter (unsalted), plus extra for greasing your ramekins

150g sugar

2 eggs

150 g self raising flour (you can make this by adding 1 tsp baking powder per 100 g all purpose flour)

6 tablespoons of golden syrup, one each in the bottom of the ramekins, the remainder for drizzling over the top before serving

Instructions

Firstly, preheat your oven to 350 F (180 C), and grease your ramekins or pudding basins with a little bit of butter. Add 1 tablespoon of golden syrup to the bottom of each ramekin.

Now mix together your butter and sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes on a high speed in a stand mixer is usually sufficient. Add your eggs, one at a time and mix until they are well combined. If the mixture starts to curdle then add about a tablespoon of your flour and mix until smooth. Now add the rest of your flour and mix until well combined.

Your pudding mix should be thick enough to hold its shape, but should drop easily from the end of a wooden spoon, if it seems too thick you could add a tablespoon of milk to loosen it up a little.

Spoon your pudding mix into your ramekins on top of the golden syrup.

Cut a square of baking paper or foil large enough to completely cover the top of each ramekin, with a couple of inches to spare. Fold the paper or foil so that it has a pleat in the middle.

Cover your ramekins with the paper or foil; if using paper you’ll need to tie this securely using string.

Place the ramekins into your deep sided oven tray and fill the tray to roughly ¾ full with hot water. Place the tray and ramekins in the middle of the oven and let them steam for around 45 minutes. The bigger the pudding, the longer it will need to steam. A large pudding in a 3.5 pint, 70 oz, or 2 litre basin will take at least 1 ½ hours to cook.

You could also cook these in a microwave; it’s not going to get you perfect results, but it’s a good way to throw together a last-minute dessert. Use a microwave safe pudding basin or bowl, and cover the top securely with cling film instead of baking paper or foil. Microwave in two-minute bursts until the sponge has set. The larger the pudding, the longer this will take. You do not need to poke holes in the cling film.

Once cooked the puddings will be golden in colour (microwaved sponges will not be golden, check they are set using a wooden skewer).

You’ll need to let them cool for about 5 to 10 minutes before you tip them into a bowl ready for serving. Once you’ve removed them from the ramekins the syrup should be at the top; drizzle them with the remaining golden syrup. I recommend serving these with custard, cream, clotted cream, or a scoop of vanilla ice cream — just go where the mood takes you.

There are other variations of a steamed pudding you could experiment with if you are feeling adventurous; replace the golden syrup with a strawberry or raspberry jam/jelly/preserve for a jam sponge, use marmalade and grate some zest into the sponge mix for an orange pudding (you could even add some all spice and cinnamon if you wanted), use lemon curd and lemon zest in the sponge for a lemon pudding, replace 25g of the flour with cocoa powder and make a chocolate sauce/custard for a chocolate sponge, or (don’t laugh), add some currants and lemon zest to the sponge to make the infamous Spotted Dick. You could even make it more grown up by soaking some raisins in rum the night before, then adding them to the sponge mix and soaking the finished sponge in more rum and setting it alight before serving.

The most important thing is to find the version that you like best and treat yourself this January — you deserve it.