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. 

Thursday's cookies

I was making a somewhat unexpected and somewhat sombre trip eastwards. This would involve seeing friends and I thought that a gift of some baking (to both the sombre and non-sombre parts) would probably be appropriate (although I was unsure about the appropriateness for the sombre part).

What I decided that I wanted to cook was something featuring peanut butter as I had a fairly good idea that this would go down with well with all my hosts. I had cooked some peanut butter cookies a while ago for Matt's workmates (they were not universally well received due the nut allergy issue), but was not entirely satisfied with them so wanted to try a different recipe. The previous batch had been tasty enough but were a bit too crispy – I wanted something a bit chewier (this is unusual because usually I like crispy things). The solution I envisaged would involve jam. I would try to recreate the classic peanut butter and jam on toast, but within a cookie. I found a recipe along these lines (it was actually for peanut butter and “jelly” cookies but I refuse to refer to jam as jelly, even within a recipe that is probably American by concept).

I started off by making the cookie dough, fairly straightforward and only requiring one bowl which was pleasing. I didn't have enough crunchy peanut butter so had to top up 40g with smooth and I didn't have any dark brown muscovado sugar. The recipe said to use a combination of this and caster sugar but I figured that if I used all soft brown sugar this would sort of make the average.

You were supposed to bake the bake all the cookies and then sandwich two together with seedless raspberry jam. This was going to require deviation. I was adamant that I wanted to include the jam in the bake. We didn't have any raspberry jam and, even if we did, seedless jam is something that seems almost morally wrong to me. After deliberation I opted for my mum's gooseberry jam:

• This is my preferred jam to go with peanut butter on toast
• I fancied its chances as the most adhesive of the jams available to me, which would be important if it was to be successfully integrated into the bake

I decided that I would sandwich the layers together pre-baking, which would hopefully facilitate successful transport. I'd used the roll into balls and squish with a fork method to form the cookies so there were convenient grooves in which the jam could be applied. I resisted the temptation to pile on loads of jam, having enough foresight to realise that it would just pour out and make a horrible sticky mess so that I wouldn't be able to get the cookies off of the baking tray.

Due to the increased mass per unit compared to the recipe (mine were of course by now double decker cookies) I increased the cooking time slightly – I wanted chewy but I didn't want raw. I took them out of the oven when they were starting to go golden. A trick I have found with baking cookies is that they harden up a bit after you've removed them from the oven, so not to worry if they seemed too soft to start with. First impressions were good but we'd have to wait until they'd cooled for a taste test – tongue burnt via hot jam is to be avoided.

I was on a roll now and thought that I would augment these slightly experimental peanut butter cookies with a batch of tried and tested chocolate melting moments – my granny's recipe. Probably my favourite of all the things she used to bake. Therefore slackery wasn't in order, just a conversion from ounces to grams (I don't get on too well with imperial) and maybe a bit more cocoa powder than is traditional. Granny would often melt some chocolate on the top of each one and finish off with a cherry, but I didn't have time for that last night. So maybe I was a bit more lazy than slack, but I did the rolling them in oats thing. I resisted the temptation to try one of these – knowing full well that this is a recipe for guaranteed deliciousness. But I did put one by for Matt.

Just before bed we shared one of the peanut butter / jam sandwich cookies. This too met my requirements for deliciousness. I just hope that my hosts like them.

Saturday's alternative cake

Not being quite sure how many people to expect to Matt, my husband's, birthday luncheon and knowing to expect two under 7 year olds I deceided to make another sponge to augment the black forest gateau. Time now pressing on I decided to go for the simplest sponge going. This is very pleasing mathematically:

For every egg you use:

• 50g of butter / butter substitute 
• 50g sugar
• 50g self raising flour

It is also very pleasing in terms of simplicity. You just put it all in a bowl together mix it up a bit with a spoon and then whisk it all together with the electric beaters (you only have to mix it up a bit with a spoon first if you don't want the ingredients to fly everywhere, you can omit that step if you don't mind a lot of splattering). I started off with 3 eggs (and 150g of everything else) but once this was whisked decided that it would insufficient for 12 fairy cakes and 1 round sponge so added another egg (and another 50g of everything else). I also added a few drops of vanilla extract (this protects against it tasting too eggy) and a splash of milk to loosen everything up.

Then I spooned it into my cases. I was particularly excited to be making fairy cakes as I'd got some rather attractive new fairy cake cases (I chose to use red stripy ones today). It cooks at 180˚C until golden brown, confirmed by skewer test. The time depends on the size of the cake so the fairy cakes took about 20 minutes and the larger sponge about 25.

I was not about to go doing anything fancy with these cakes - I had had enough of that with the gateau and I thought I should leave them fairly simple for people with more of a delicate pallet. I cut the big round cake in half and sandwiched it together with cherry jam. This would go with the spare chocolate cake that I had sandwiched together with chocolate hazelnut spread to create the effect of one whole cake.

I intended to make butterfly cakes with the small ones, but instead of using butter icing I would use lemon curd. Unfortunately when I came to deploy the lemon curd I found that there was considerably less left than when I last opened the jar. So instead I used various preserves that I found in the fridge and made 3 of each of:

• lemon curd
• loganberry jam
• cranberry and orange jam
• gooseberry jam

(all preserves courtesy of my mum)

I constructed a cake stand (doilies and all) and we were good to go.

Jammy butterfly cake

An array of cakes

I must say that this good basic sponge was much more to my taste than the gateau - much less rich but equally (in my opinion) delicious - helped almost certainly by the vanilla extract which meant that it didn't taste eggy at all.