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. 

Sunday's topsy turvy cake

My parents arrived for the weekend on Friday night. The culinary inevitabilities would include pizza (always when there are guests), soup (Dad loves this and it probably explains his envy inducing slimness) and bread and cheese (the rest of us love this and it probably explains our non-slimness). And the temporary swelling of household numbers would also be a good excuse for a nice piece of cake.

Saturday was a busy day in the garden, and by the time we had cleaned it and ourselves up and taken my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier for an evening walk at the beach (once all the tourists had gone home), there was no time for cake making. Especially as I wanted to indulge a bit in my favourite fruit based word game.

By the time Sunday came around cake was very clearly on mine and my husband Matt’s mind. We prepared ourselves with a swim, our first since holiday. I felt very out of shape and if I’m going to make a habit of cake making I’m going to need to put a bit more vigour into my lengths than I did yesterday.

Matt was keen that I use up:

1) a large quantity of desiccated coconut. I have no idea how we’ve got so much as I don’t ever remember buying any

2) some cherries preserved in some sort of continental spirit which were opened a while ago in error and have since been sat unused in the fridge

Both were well past their “best-before” dates. I inspected the cherries. As predicted they were fine, they are after all preserved in alcohol and will probably last almost forever. I tasted the coconut. I have no idea what gone-off coconut would taste like, but it too seemed fine. So I was left with the dilemma of whether to try and combine these two ingredients (there must be weirder combinations than coconut and cherry), use one of them (and save the other for another day), or bake something entirely unrelated to either.

My preferred thought to deploy the cherries in a Black Forest gateau. I’ve always wanted to go there to eat this in situ, although I think I might actually be disappointed and find that the Black Forest gateau is something invented in England in the 1970s and has nothing to do with the Black Forest. But at 7pm on a Sunday there was no whipping cream to be had in our local convenience store (not so convenient if you need whipping cream) and I thought that spray cream wouldn’t create the desired effect. So I decided to keep the cherries for another day and use the coconut.

I think that coconut on its own is a bit boring and was thinking about making a pineapple upside down cake with coconut sponge. A kind of baked pina colada. But I also had cake-stand full of almost over ripe nectarines and kiwis that I was no way going to be able to eat in the conventional way before they started to ferment. This called for a multi-fruit topsy turvy cake with coconut sponge.

So I arranged the nectarines and kiwis in the bottom of a big tin. It didn’t look like quite enough fruit so I added some of my bargain tinned strawberries. I was worried that it was all a bit wet so sprinkled over some brown sugar, resisted the urge to add coconut liqueur and put the lot in the oven at a lowish temperature to evaporate and caramelise a bit.

In the meantime I had to make the sponge. Since I could not find a suitable recipe for coconut sponge it would have to be somewhat improvised. It would be an improvisation on my mum’s trusty 6,6,6,3,3,3 cake, only these are in imperial measurements and I prefer metric. So:

1) 150g butter (or butter substitute) and 150g sugar creamed together

2) 3 eggs, beaten and added one at a time with a tablespoon of flour with each one (I’ve no idea if this flour thing is really necessary but recipes always tell you to do this)

3) 150g flour, added gradually so as to make sure it doesn’t get too try (I think maybe the flour you add with the eggs is supposed to come out of the 150g but I forgot to weigh that)

4) 50g desiccated coconut, stirred in. I was cautious with this as I didn’t want to dry the mixture out but 50g didn’t seem to go very far so I added another 50g.

I poured this over the slightly cooked fruit and returned the whole lot to a hotter oven (about 180°C) and baked for about 30 minutes. I didn’t really know how long to bake for but it was looking brown after this long and the skewer test confirmed that it was at least not raw.

My mum declined my offer to drink the syrup that the strawberries had come in but rather than waste is suggested that I could turn it into a sauce. I thought that this might be overly sweet so added some orange juice and zest and set over the hob to reduce. It didn’t appear to be reducing at all and after about 10 minutes I lost patience and threw in a spoonful of corn flour. Mum then gave me a corn flour tip: mix it up with a small amount of water first. But it was too late and I spent the next 15 minutes removing lumps of corn flour. But I added another spoonful in the manner advised by my mum and the sauce duly thickened.

It was one of those bakes that I dread removing from the tin; I was concerned about major cake / fruit separation and didn’t dare risk an intermediate cooling rack between the tin and the serving plate. Amazingly it all held together and looked almost like something out of a French patisserie.

We served it (after soup and bread and cheese) with the sauce, and some spray cream for good measure. It was very delicious and despite all the coconut I had added nice and moist. There’s still half left but because of all the fruit I don’t think it’ll keep very long. Oh well, that’s lunch sorted.