Treacle Sponge Pudding Daring Bakers Challenge April 2010

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen.

She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

When I read the challenge for this months DB , I was a bit reluctant as one of the ingridients they use for pudding are suet and that is something I really don't want to use.
But I din't had to worry at all as on the end og the post she had told if you don't want to use don't use suet, the main thing is it has to be a steamed pudding.

She gave us a really free hand, we could make what ever recipe we wanted and she gave us few links to delicious pudding club etc.....
I choosed to do a pudding from one of my favourite Brittish pastey chef James Martin, i have his book called Desserts and I love that book.
The chocolate sauce I made was from this book too.

I don't think I can call this Treacle pudding as I forgot to add treacle, while we were having the dessert, i was saying in the book the pic was looking really chocolate brown and mine is so light and then suddenly I realized I forgot to add treacle.

I halfed the recipe which is given here as we are only three at home and this amount of ingridients you can serve for 6 to 8 ppl.
I served the pudding with a butterscotch sauce with ginger.

3 tbsp golden syrup, plus 3-4 tbsp extra to serve. ( i used more syrup
175 gm self raising flour
1 rounded tsp of baking powder
175 gm very soft butter
3 large eggs
175 gm of light brown sugar
1 tbsp black treacle ( ofcourse I forgot to add them)


Butter 4 individual small puding pan. Cut for each double thickness of kitchen foil.
Add 1 tbsp if golden syrup into each pan.
Sift the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and add the soft butter, eggs sugar and black treacle.
Using an electric hand whisk ( or a large fort and a lot of elbow grease) beat the mixture for about 2 minutes or untill it has throughly blended.Spoon the mixture into the pudding pans and use the back of the spoon to leverl the top. ( fill only 3/4 of the pans)

Cover the pans with the foil, making a pleat in the center. Pull the foil down the outside of the basin and tie in place around the rim with string, taking the string over the top and tying it on the other side to make a handle for easy lifting. Trim of the excess foil all the way round.

Place the pudding in a steamer fitted over a saucpan of boiling water ans steam the pudding for 40 to 45 minutes. checking the water level half way through.
To serve, loosen the pudding all around using a palate knife, invert it into a warmed plate and pour the extra syrup over the top and enjoy.
I didn't use the syrup, i made a light butterscotch saice with ginger to serve.
You can also serve this with custard, icecream or just cream.

Vedict: First time I am making a steamed pudding and we all loved it. Even hubby who like more savoury food said that this was indeed a very delcious dessert.