Sunday's sponge pudding

Inspired by a popular television baking programme I had half an intention of baking pretzels this weekend. Saturday was mostly occupied with a trip to a local historic house (where I had a lovely sandwich). We had an invitation to Barbara's, my mother-in-law, for Sunday lunch plus I needed to do a little bit of clothes shopping (this is not an inappropriate use of the word need) and wanted to swim in the afternoon so thought I might be pressed to get all the aspects of pretzel making fitted in. Instead I offered to take a pudding for lunch. This is rarely an offer refused by Barbara.

 

For some reason I decided that I wanted to do a pudding with marmalade. The reason might be that we have just a small amount of marmalade left in a massive jar taking up a lot of space in the fridge. After a quick skim of my recipes I decided that it would be a sponge pudding – there were other options but these were too complex for me today. I was just about to start and Matt, my husband, suggested I investigate what other preserves we had that needed using (I have a habit of acquiring lots of delicious jam from my mum and then when I get a new one forgetting about the old ones). So instead of marmalade the pudding would now feature orange and cranberry jam.

 

I chose a steamed sponge pudding recipe, but usefully it gave options for microwaving. 4 minutes in the microwave was much more appealing than over an hour steaming. The sponge recipe was very simple:

• 100g butter (I used butter substitute)
• 100g caster sugar (I substituted 30g for golden syrup)
• beaten together (I really don't know what I did before I had my electric hand whisk)
• 2 eggs
• beaten in one at a time with 20g self-raising flour each
• Another 60g self-raising flour
• folded in
• 25g of chopped mixed nuts
• because sometimes I think it's nice to have bit of texture in the sponge

(The recipe also listed 30ml milk in the ingredient list but didn't say when to put it in, so I left it out.)

 

Then it came to assemble the sponge with the jam. I searched for a pudding basin, I was convinced that I had various sizes acquired from my mum, but couldn't find any, even with Matt's help and he's very good at finding things. So obviously a pudding basin is something I am yet to acquire and for now I would have to use a microwave-proof dish. I greased this very thoroughly – the last thing I wanted was a stuck pudding – and then put in a layer of jam. Pleasingly (for Matt at least) I was able to use up the jam. And topped it off with the sponge mix. Since it was in a stable dish with a lid I thought it was a reasonable risk to take to transport it to Barbara's and cook it there when we were ready.

 

Matt went ahead to his mum's with the pudding while I undertook my necessary shopping trip (which was successful thanks to a lovely lady in a popular high street store). On my way to Barbara's I deviated to get some custard, this should have been a relatively straightforward task but I dallied over what type to get: fresh or long life, full(er) or low(er) fat. I decided against fresh as I wasn't sure that people would definitely want it. The low(er) fat option actually wasn't much lower fat than the full(er) fat option and the energy saving marginal when you consider the rest of the pudding. So I went for the full(er) fat option. Some people might think that I should make my own custard but to be quite honest it seems like and absolute palaver and the stuff you can buy seems very good to me. (I developed a big taste for tinned custard when I once had a housemate who worked at the local custard factory and we apparently had an endless supply – it makes a very satisfactory pudding heated up with a spoonful of jam.

 

We had a very delicious lunch, including some fabulous roast potatoes. I love roast potatoes. We gave our dinner a good quarter of an hour to go down before I resumed my pudding cooking duties. The recipe had suggested that I needed to microwave it on low for 4 minutes. Which I did and it looked like nothing had happened at all. So I cranked it up to medium and gave it another 2 minutes – we had some action but the skewer test indicated it still had a way to go. So I cranked it up to high for another 2 minutes. This was risky, but I was getting impatient. I suppose one of the problems with microwave cooking instructions is that microwaves come in a variety of wattages – for example our high is 1000W, whereas Barbara's is 750W so “low” is not going to be quite the same.

 

Fortunately my combination of low, medium and high appeared to be successful – as indicated by a skewer test, you don't get any of that “golden brown” thing in a microwave. We had to wait just a few minutes longer while it cooled (and thus shrank) in the dish so that I could turn it out. This was the most nerve-racking part, you have to be assertive with the pudding. Further success – it was transferred jam side up to a plate. And with the jam side up the absence of the golden brown thing doesn't matter so much (not that I'm ever really one for making things look that good). Matt and I did have ours with custard (it was the right choice), while Barbara had hers condiment free. And as she remarked, I enjoy making puddings and she enjoys eating them.