Well I didn’t get back to my blog before heading to BrisVegas… but really who’s surprised about that?
The trip up was good but really really busy, filled with trips to see family and friends and lots of running all over the place.

I think I actually managed to cover the four corners that outline the outer regions of Brisbane. In ten days I was in Logan Reserve / Beaudesert, Boonah out past Ipswich, Caboolture and Cleaveland with a brief stay in the centre of the city as well. Phew it makes me tired just thinking about it all over again.

I got the cake made before I left as well as decorations and an overall plan which had me less nervous about getting it all together in time. I didn’t manage to make costumes but did track down props and bits and pieces to throw together a little red riding hood and woodsman costume… complete with wolfs head with grannys night cap

The party was a great success filled with over 40 people there to celebrate with dear friends. Even though I wasn’t happy with the overall finish of the cake (there being too much un-eveness on the top) Lesley and Colin loved it and everyone was more than happy to tuck in to the mud cake and the cupcakes.

I ended up with a white chocolate mud cake filled and coated in a rich raspberry butter cream then coated with a white chocolate fondant. The decorations were sugar paste roses and hearts made in house by Mr B and myself. Not too bad for our first ever attempts at sugar roses if I do say so myself. I also made 5 dozen cupcakes – there were chocolate with raspberry butter cream and decorated with a two layer red and white sugar heart and then white chocolate and macadamia cupcakes with a white chocolate and vanilla bean butter cream. Surprisingly a lot of the cakes were eaten on the night.

It was a busy few days helping set up for the party , the the party shenanigans an the clean up but it was a fantastic time and I am so glad we were able to be a part of it.
I even managed to get a couple of pictures of the completed Lesley and Colin name trees I finished last year and forgot to take photos of (picture of the Lesley tree can be seen at my flickr account). Lesley is rather enamoured with them and they were still out hanging on the handles of one of their display cabinets. I only grabbed a couple of quick shots but at least now I have a record of how they ended up after finishing.

While away I started and finished a knitting project, just another infinity scarf, this time for myself. No photos yet though as I still need to block it and take pictures. I have progress on my restart of the woodland lace scarf too so I will leave that for a knitting focused post later in the week.

Tomorrow is the last day of my holidays… surprising how fast it has gone. All in all I don’t think I managed to do a fraction of what I had planned but that’s ok. What I did manage was to spend time catching up with some great friends both here in Melbourne and in Brisbane… and I even got skype working on my phone so I can call friend farther afield a little more often too which will be nice. The best thing about tomorrow though… I’m off to Bendigo again! we’re filling a car and heading off on a road trip again, 4 yarn mad women and a date with the Bendigo Australian wool and sheep show.

Do I need more wool?.. hell no! but I am sure I will come back with quite a bit.

So on the week where Melbourne weather tried to do its best to emulate Brisbane I had plans for another extravagant cake attempt. This time 3 dozen cupcakes all sitting on a cupcake tower with a cutting cake/ centerpiece style thing at the top.
Didn’t seem like it would be much of a problem until the humidity hit and the last thing you want when dealing with fondant is heat and humidity. One of the reasons I hadn’t tried any real cake decorating until moving south.
Oh well I was sure going to learn a lot from this and charged forth regardless.

All in all excluding a midnight fondant disaster on Friday night and an emergency stop off for more fondant on Saturday I think it held together quite well. The request from the birthday girl was butterflies and dinosaurs and a garden … tall order but I had the idea to do a dinosaur in the midst of a bee and butterfly filled garden with the garden being made up by the cupcakes. The bees had to be in there as having made some for a lady at work I thought they were so cute and wanted to do a few more.
All the toppers were made from sugar paste and sat atop a mixture of vanilla or chocolate cupcakes with vanilla butter cream tinted green to match the larger cake. The pink ones were vanilla cake with a raspberry butter cream that had been flavoured (and coloured) with the addition of pureed raspberries.
The cutting cake on top was a mud cake with a layer of chocolate ganache and covered in fondant (a nightmare to try and keep from bubbling or melting in the weather.. and I hope it survived long enough for the party).
The dinosaur was hand moulded from gum paste with the main body area being formed from a mound of LCM bars (rice crispie treats) This actually worked really well and was quite durable considering – and Nic yes this was done on the fly with no instructions ( I actually surprised myself with this actually working from concept to final product).

So Happy Birthday Clare, I hope you loved your cake as much as I enjoyed making it.

Well another year and another Halloween has been and gone. Last year we missed out doing much to celebrate as we were madly in the throws of getting ready to move to Melbourne. In fact, we were in Melbourne just days before Halloween trying to find somewhere to live. This year it wasn’t looking good for a big celebration either. Things have just been so busy trying to find time to get everything done just wasn’t going to happen.

I still have two sci-fi based costumes to get ready before the end of October not to mention cake decorating, party planning etc etc. The plan was keep it simple. A few friends, no costumes some food, drinks games and just a quiet night in.. maybe pull out a few of the decorations…

Well this is what resulted:

There was also dungeon wallpaper down the hallway and a glow in the dark room with black light in the TV room. The low key decorations somehow managed an upgrade along the way. In my defence Halloween is my favourite holiday of the year and I LOVE pulling out all the candles and decorations and this was the first chance to try things out in the new house.

Not all the decorations moved with us interstate so it was an adventures seeing what we had kept and them wondering why we got rid of some of the things we did.  The food… well it was themed of course and the recipes for the things I made follow below. Most of them were adapted / pillaged from the internet and largely this year inspirations was provided by  Martha Stewart’s website (as well as templates for the bats and rats used for decorations). The menu included:

• Shrunken head pies
• Bloodied Brain cupcakes (oodles of places have listed instructions for these)
• Brain pannacotta (as inspired by Not quite Nigella)
• Witches hands
• Puff pasty pumpkins
• Creature chips and dips
• then a variety of cookies, treats and standard nibbles.

It was quite the spread for the 5 of us … I am still working on my tendency to over cater but I loved the way everything turned out.

On to the recipes!

Creature Chips

The creature chips were the simplest to make and were a lot nicer to be nibbling on with dips and cheeses than standard fatty salty chips (don’t get me wrong I am a lover of fatty salty chips but there was more than enough of both to go around that more was not required).

Simply take your favourite Hallloween cookie cutters – I have over 40 to choose from thanks to a great barrel full of cutters provided by the wonderful adma a few Halloweens ago- using purchased tortillas in a variety of types if you can find them. I used wholegrain and plain cut out the shapes with your cookie cutters, spray lightly with canola or olive oil spray (the olive oil with garlic is really tasty) sprinkle with a little salt and bake in the oven for about 5-10 mins at ~190°C, basically until they just start to colour.

Place the chips on a cooling rack until completely cool and crisp, store in an airtight container. These are best made no more than about 24hours before your event. They will also work with any type of flat bread such as mountain bread and lavash breads. For Halloween I tried to choose good shapes for dipping that wouldn’t have small pieces that broke off, these were: bats, ghosts, coffins, devil heads and Frankensteins.

Puff Pastry Pumpkins
The recipe for these was pilfered from Marthastewart.com and is another simple but effective treat.

You will need:

Butter puff pastry
Gruyere cheese (~ 100gish. 1.5 cups)
Parmesan Cheese (1cup)
Paprika
Butter for melting
Djon Mustard
and a pumpkin cookie cutter

Mix the grated parmesan and gruyere (I also ground in a little fresh black pepper) and set aside.
Spread a thin layer of djon mustard on one sheet of the puff pasty (I used the pampas packet of butter puff pastry that comes with 3 sheets and managed to get over 12 pumpkins form that, you would get more if you re rolled the scraps and cut again). Sprinkle a good layer of the chees mixture over the mustard and lay a second sheet of pastry across the top, encasing the cheese. With a rolling pin roll the sheets together a little so the stick.

Cut your shapes and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper, then place the whole tray in the fridge to chill for ~5-10mins. Melt ~tablespoon of butter and add a teaspoon of paprika (more if you prefer a stronger floavour). Remove the pastry from the fridge and brush with the melted butter and paprika mixture. Place in a preheated 190°C oven and cook for 7-10 minutes until pastry is golden brown. You can serve these hot or cold and they reheat well in the oven.

Shrunken Head Pies

These pies were just a basic mince meat pie filling baked in a skull pan such as this one.
for the filling you will need:

• onion (diced)
• 1kg (you could halve this and just use 500g for less pies)
• 125g bacon diced nice and small
• tomato paste
• Beef stock
• gravy powder

Saute off the bacon and onion in a pan before adding the mince and browning it off. Throw in ~1/4 cup of tomato paste and a cup of beef stock. I usually add some instant gravy powder to help thicken the mix and enrich the flavour. I usually to this to taste and add some tabasco, worcestershire sauce, black pepper and salt. Simmer the mixture until it is thick but not dry, then set aside to cool.
Line the baking tray with shortcrust pastry ( I usually just use packaged shortcrust pastry for parties to cut down on prep time, add to that pastry and I often don’t agree when I make it from scratch this is a low stress alternative) add filling then place a pastry ‘lid’ onto each of the pies and brush with egg wash. I cooked mine at 190°C for about 15-20 minutes until the pastry was lovely and crisp and golden. Let the pies cool in the tray for 5mins before turning out onto a cooling rack.

The pies can be made beforehand and kept in the fridge / freezer, just reheat in the oven before serving.

Dulce De Leche Bat Cookies (From Martha Stewart)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk
• 4 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dulce de leche ( I made my Dulce De Leche in the oven in the same way as Not Quite Nigella, this is easier than babysitting a pot of boiling caramel)

Whisk together flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder. Beat butter and sugars with a mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg, yolk, chocolate, and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture, and beat until just combined. Shape into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate 1 hour.
On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out 36 rounds with a 2-inch cutter, and space 1 inch apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Using an aspic cutter set, cut a triangle, point side up, in the center of half the cookies, and then use the half-moon cutter to make one “wing” on each side of the triangle. Refrigerate 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375. Bake until set, 7 to 9 minutes. Let cool. Top each uncut cookie with 1 teaspoon dulce de leche and a cutout cookie.

A couple of weekends ago now we all got together for what has become our monthly stitchy day (with increasing amounts of stitching happening now I might add). This time Nic was visiting from Cardiff so the day was of course spent catching up, checking out wips and the like. Great fun as always, and as is most often the case a day of stitching calls for cupcakes!
This time round I decided to make Maple Pecan cupcakes. These had been on my list of flavour combinations for the RSPCA cupcake day but didn’t quite get done due to a lack of time after making loads of cupcakes toppers and three other flavours of cupcakes (All the pictures for the RSPCA cupcakes can be found here) – as a side note we made almost $400.00 for the RSPCA with a combined effort of three workplaces.
The cupcakes were made according to the maple cupcake recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes (A book I have as of yet not purchased but will rectify that at some point) I borrowed the recipe from another blog. I used a vanilla butter cream instead of a Maple as I ran out of maple syrup!! (the bottle and a half I had in the cupboard was insufficient o_O)
These cupcakes were great the day they were baked but unfortunately really dried out quickly. I want to redo these and try a different recipe. I may even try this one again and tweak things a bit. The maple syrup is the only sugar source in these which is good as I think it cuts down overall on the sugar but I think adding some brown sugar would give a depth of flavour and slight caramelly flavour to them that they would really benefit from. The cupcakes were topped with maple praline pecan nuts (yum!) which were super easy to make.

On to the recipe.

Ingredients

2-3/4 cups plain flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened.
2 cups pure maple syrup. – If your lucky enough to live somewhere where your maple syrup comes in grades then use grade B and realise that I am oh so jealous.
3 large eggs, room temp
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line standard or mini muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.
2.Cream butter until smooth. Add the maple syrup, and beat until combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Add flour mixture, and mix until combined. Beat in milk and vanilla until combined.
- I added about 3/4 of a cup of chopped pecans to the mix before spooning out the mixture.
3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until golden and a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes for standard, 10 to 13 minutes for minis. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes.

Frosting
As I mentioned I just used a vanilla butter cream here … I thought maple would be too overpowering and besides I had run out by the frosting stage.
For my butter cream I usually just use roughly 125g of softened good quality unsalted butter, cream until it goes pale and fluffy then add in icing sugar and up to 1/4 of a cup of cream or milk. I usually just add icing sugar until I am happy with the consistency for piing onto the cupcakes.

Maple Praline Pecans
place a 3/4 – 1cup of maple syrup into a nonstick pan and bring to the boil with ~1cup of pecans. Watch the mixture as you don’t want it to burn. Keep it at a low boil until the syrup starts to crystallise onto the nuts, turn them out onto baking paper and spread out to cool. Once cooled use to decorate the cupcakes you can use them whole or chop them for a praline crumble type thing.
The recipe states that the decorated cupcakes can be stored up to 1 day at room temperature in airtight containers and really they are spot on with this. Any longer and they really dry out, which was a bit disappointing really as I like to take left overs to work but that is up to a day or two after I bake them. So now to find a maple pecan recipe that will last long enough to share :p

Most (of the very few) people that track my blog will already know that a while ago now I made a Whale birthday cake I have uploaded a lot of pictures to do with the construction of the cake to flickr but thought I would post a mosaic here. Next up in my baking adventures is two more decorated birthday cakes (fairy dinosaur garden and an outer space sci-fi cake) oh and of course the maple pecan redoux.

So I admit it.. I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds for food blogs.. primarily baking related, though not all. I haven’t been game enough to sign up to any of the challenges / monthly bake events etc etc that are floating around out there but I do read many of them.
Recently the daring bakers challenge chose to do Chocolate Marshmallow Biscuits (as per the recipe provided on the food network website by Gayle Gand). Now anyone who has seen me look longingly at a packet of chocolate royales just before devouring the entire thing will know that there is no way I could let this recipe go untried. So after a weekend of misadventures where I always had to leave my baking to go attend to something else I eventually finished about 46 of these little temptresses. Which of course resulted in me handing them out to all and sundry as I could NOT be trusted with that many little chocolate pillowy temptresses of doom.

Of course I have no decent photos or in progress shots for various reasons… the progress shots were more or less impossible sue to my frequent state of being covered in sticky marshmallow stuffs and the bad final shots because my ever present lack of organisation meant they were hastily snapped before giving away the majority of what I had left late one evening. They were tasty though and I managed to make three varieties due to lack of commitment to just one flavour. There were plain, ones with raspberry jam between bikkie and marshmallow and ones with caramel between bikkie and marshmallow. All in all I think it went rather well with satisfactory devastation of the kitchen and surrounds achieved. I even eventually got Francois (My Kitchen Aid) free of the last vestiges of marshmallow doom.

Onward to the Recipe!

Biscuit Base

3 Cups all purpose flour
1/2 a cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3/4 of a teaspoon baking powder
3/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 a teaspoon cinnamon (or in my case at least one teaspoon but cinnamon is not somehting we are afraid if our house)
12 tablespoons (170g) unsalted butter
3 eggs whisked together

Method

In a mixer add butter to the dry ingredients and mix on a low speed until the mixture is sandy.
Add eggs and mix until just combined.
Form dough into a disk and wrap with cling wrap before refrigerating for at least one hour (or up to three days)
When ready to bake roll out the dough to approximately 1/8 of an inch thick and cut dough into small rounds using a 1 to 1 1/2 inch round cookie cutter.

Place rounds onto lined biscuit tray and bake in a pre-heated oven (375F) for 10minutes or until golden brown.
Cool biscuits completely to room temperature before adding marshmallow.

Home made Marshmallow

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup light corn syrup ( although seeing corn syrup in numerous shops since being in Melbourne do you think I could find it when I needed it.. the one shop I was sure had it was closed by the time I got there on three attempts… so I substituted glucose syrup / liquid glucose and this seemed to work fine)

3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbs powdered gelatin and 2tbs water or 1 sheet leaf gelatin (I am sure you could sub this with the vegetarian friendly agar substance if you wanted)
2 egg whites room temperature
1/4 tsp vanilla (or how it happens to come out of the bottle in a ‘sploosh’ which is how I do it)

Method

In a saucepan, combine the water, glucose (corn syrup) and sugar and bring to the boil until ‘soft-ball’ stage (235F.. note not Celsius I almost messed this up woops)
Sprinkle the powdered gelatin over the cold water and let dissolve or soak.

Remove the syrup from the heat and add the gelatin, mixing well. Set mixture aside to cool slightly while whipping your egg whites.
Whip the whites until soft peaks form then slowly add the syrup to the whites.

Add the vanilla and continue whipping the mixture until stiff (not too stiff though as the mixture will continue to thicken as it cools which can make it hard to pipe) The mixture should be stiff enough to pipe and hold its shape.

Transfer the mixture to a piping bag and pipe a mound onto each biscuit base.

** Before piping on the marshmallow I placed a layer of jam or caramel on the base of the biscuit for an extra flavour kick

Chocolate Glaze

360 grams semisweet chocolate (you may need more depending on how many biscuits you end up with)
60g cocoa butter or vegetable oil

Melt the chocolate and oil together in the top of a double boiler until the chocolate runs fluidly.

Dip the marshmallow biscuits into the hot glaze one at a time lifting out with a fork and allowing the excess chocolate to run off. Place the coated biscuits on a tray lined with parchment paper until set (about 1-2 hours)

I realised lately that amongst my friends my cooking (especially my baking) has become known mostly for sweet things. I find this somewhat amusing as personally I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, I prefer the savoury side of life (cheeses, deli meats, cute little finger foods etc). I think the culprit is my recent (ok going on more than 2 years now) obsession with cupcakes. Yep cupcakes, I am a pawn to their cuteness and endless potential for flavour combinations. Add to that the wonderful nostalgia thing and feeling like a kid with the best treat ever whenever you eat one and really, how can anyone resist? I do cook other things though, so this time (even though I did make cupcakes the same day … orange, cardamom and chocolate even.. recipe in another post to come) I am sharing something with no sugar in sight but still I don’t suggest eating this if you are on a “diet”.

Looking for something to serve for brunch / lunch / all day eating fest that should provide something more substantial than cupcakes, chocolate and chips and dip I rummaged through my cookbooks. Again this recipe comes from Nigella’s how to be a domestic goddess, which I really recommend people pick up and read at some point. It has some fantastic recipes but also her writing style is evocative and engaging.
I chose to make pie… Pizza Rustica to be precise, though with a few alterations either from not being able to find specific ingredients or sheer laziness (I decided to sleep in for an extra hour instead of making the pastry).

The pie was full of flavour and was even better over the next couple of days providing quick and easy lunches from the leftovers. It does take a while to cook but the prep is simple and quick so once it is in the oven there really isn’t anything to worry about

I served this with purple potato salad (though with the purple seeping into the mayonnaise it looked more lavender than purple) We have been buying purple congo potatoes at the Victoria markets and have been joyfully seeing what we can throw them in. So far there has been the salad, pies and mash (very strange mounds of lavender coloured mash were a weird site net to steak but in a good way).

On to the recipe… (minus the pastry which was a simple shortcrust-like creation)

Ingrediets (filling)

50g luganega (or mild pork sausage skinned)   – Not being able to find thins at the last minute, I substituted chorizo.. ok not mild but really really good
250g Ricotta
50g smoked provolone – again I couldn’t source this at the local deli (not even at Moonee Ponds o_O ) so I used unsmoked provolone (piquant)
125g Italian Mozzarella
50g Grated Parmesan
1/2 clove of garlic
2 tablespoons flat leafed parsley
2 pinches chilli powder – I left this out because I used the chorizo and didn’t want it to be too spicy
100g prosciutto
100g Mortadella
2 eggs lightly beaten
1 heaped tablespoon dried breadcrumbs – I substituted sage and onion stuffing mix which I generally always do when something calls for breadcrumbs

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius

Fry the sausage for ~5mins breaking it up into small pieces, before setting it aside to cool, once cooled add all the other ingredients except the bread crumbs and mix until combined.
Line a 22cm spring-form tin with your pastry (I used store bought puff pastry as it is what I had on hand), sprinkle the base with an even coating of the breadcrumbs and then add the filling. Cover with you pastry lid and fold the edges up to seal. Glaze with egg wash and poke steam holes into the top.

Bake for 10 minutes at 220 then turn the oven down to 180 and bake for a further 45mins. Leave the pie to cool slightly (about 10-25mins) before serving. It is also really tasty at room temperature and would work well taken on a picnic.

So yep I have been baking again and there is more to come this weekend too (really I just can’t help myself ). I promise the next post will have stitching pics though.
It was a friends birthday last week and we had an impromptu celebration dinner… that of course means cake! So about 3pm on the Saturday with a few hours to go before people were turning up I had the bright idea to make mud cake. Yep, that’s me always making grand plans without adequate time to see it through.

The other catch… I didn’t actually have a mud cake recipe. Thankfully Mr B’s brother is a great chef and I have very fond memories of his delicious mud cakes. A quick phone call later and I had an email overflowing with all sorts of cheffy recipes.. ie sometimes a little light on the details. The mud cake recipe however seemed easy enough to follow and I set to putting it all together.

Did I mention that I never can follow a recipe exactly and that I had decided Turkish delight mud cake was the flavour of choice for the particular person I was making it for, and  what better way to make something all gooey and decadent than 4 Turkish delight bars chopped up and dispersed through your cake (this may have been a little overkill)

Things went well though, and after over an hour and a half in the oven we had cake.. big, rich and incredibly deadly cake. No worries about calories though as birthday calories are magical and don’t count, this being a birthday cake it was declared perfectly healthy ( I wouldn’t recommend this for a non birthday occasion of you are worried about how evil baked goods are to your waistline).

A bit eager to get eating we didn’t let the cake cool completely before slathering it in a thick layer of chocolate ganache, this means that the centre was still somewhat gooey and fudgey when we cut (the Turkish delight chunks also seemed to congregate in the centre

A couple of quick notes before heading on to the recipe. This makes a BIG cake. The photo showing the batter being poured in, when cooked the cake was almost to the top of the paper and it made two mini cakes as well ( not that mini actually but made in those cute little spring form tins… I need more little tins, they are so cute). Also I cooked this in a water bath (not such a great idea in the spring form but you get that) and transferred it from the water bath after about an hour. The top does dry out so it is best to cover the cake during cooking in a similar way to when baking fruitcakes.

** The gooeyness of the cake did set once it had cooled completely though some of the softness could be attributed to moisture getting in from the water bath I used initially.

Recipe Bits

Mississipi Mud Cake

500g Butter
300g Dark Chocolate ( I used 50:50 dark and milk as the person I was baking this for is not a big dark chocolate fan)
4 Cups of Sugar
2 Cups Hot Water
2/3 cup of whisky (or in my case Scotch)
2 Tbs Instant Coffee
3 Cups Plain Flour
1/2 Cup Self Raising Flour
1/2 Cup Cocoa
4 eggs lightly beaten

** I added 4 chopped Fry’s Turkish delight bars to the batter and mixed through before pouring into the cake tin.

Place the Butter,chocolate, sugar, hot water, whisky in a bowl and heat over a double boiler until everything is melted and combined. Set the chocolate mixture to the side to cool.
Once the mixture has cooled to room temperature add the dry ingredients to the chocolate mixture. Gradually add the eggs and mix until all the ingredients are combined and there are no lumps.
Bake in a 180*C oven until cake is set in the centre. Mine took about 1.5hrs

I have a love of steamed puddings and I don’t care that they are old fashioned and outdated. They are a supreme comfort food and remind me of my granny and her old pudding basin, tying the string just right so the greaseproof paper and foil was secure and left you with a little handle to gt the pudding out again. I have very fond memories of the smell of my granny’s golden syrup pudding steaming for hours on the stove and the anticipation of having to wait until after dinner to get any.

So… while trying to think of something I could cook that was all winter warmy and wouldn’t take up space in my oven as there was going to be a lasagne baking in there I came across this recipe for a steamed syrup sponge in Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess” ( a recent purchase).  All those memories came rushing back and I knew I was going to have to get this onto the stove as soon as I got home.

It may be all time consuming to cook but really the set up doesn’t take long.  I got this going as soon as I got home and after the rather long process of putting my lasagne together, by the time we were done eating dinner the pudding was perfectly done.
Well worth the effort and so very rich and decadent with all thatgolden syrup.. Yum!

On to the recipe, because warm gooey comfort is a good thing to share

Ingredients

175g soft unsalted butter
175g self-raising flour
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
zest and juice of 1 lemon (I used limes as I am still trying to get through the box of limes I got at the markets recently)
3 tablespoons of milk

for the syrup

250g golden syrup
juice of 1/2 a lemon (lime)

The Nigella recipe just says to basically throw everything in together and mix. While I am sure this works out of habit I did it in the more traditional way:

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy, and eggs one at a time making sure each egg is incorporated before adding the next. Mix in the lemon (lime) juice and zest, add flour and milk, mix until combined making sure not to over mix and toughen the batter. The batter should be a thick pouring consistency.

With the batter prepared mix lemon juice and golden syrup together then pour into the bottom of a pudding basin (1.5L should be fine). Gently pour in the batter over the top of the golden syrup mixture and cover the basin. If you have a basin with a plastic lid woot! for you, just remember to grease it.

I used pleated baking paper over the pudding basin then aluminium foil. The “lid” was then tied on with string remembering to make a little handle so it can be fished out of the boiling water later.

Lower the basin onto a pot of boiling water so that the water comes 2/3 of the way up the sides of the basin. place the lid on the saucepan and allow the pudding to cook for 2hrs. The water should be kept at a gentle boil the entire time. Cooking time should be at least 2hrs but it is not a drama if it is longer.

Once it is done turn the pudding out onto a plate (make sure it has a rime so the syrupy sauce doesn’t run everywhere). Serve with all the usual suspects, custard, ice cream , cream etc.

Ta Da!  comfort food extraordinaire.