Nigella Lawson, the newly appointed Great British Bake Off judge, has shared a six-minute microwave method for making a syrup sponge pudding that she says is “ridiculously light” and avoids the traditional hours of steaming.
Steamed puddings are a traditional British classic, but they can be daunting for home bakers. While they may be delicious to eat, making a steamed pudding from scratch is a different beast, as they take a long time to cook and can be tricky to perfect. A sponge pudding is a moist cake dessert that is traditionally steamed in a bowl or mold and is typically served with custard. There are a huge array of flavours to try, including clementine sponge, figgy pudding and steamed marmalade pudding, but one of the most popular is the syrup sponge. This classic dessert consists of steamed sponge cake with golden syrup cooked on top and can be served with custard, cream or ice cream.
Six-minute microwave alternative
When cooked using the traditional steaming method, a syrup sponge pudding usually takes between 1.5 and 2 hours to cook, but TV cook Nigella Lawson says there is a much quicker way to make it — and it only takes six minutes. The 66-year-old TV star, who made her debut on the hit Channel 4 show last week, says cooking the pudding in the microwave for just six minutes yields the same results as steaming in the oven, so “it’s like being rewarded for impatience”.
Explaining the method on her YouTube channel, Lawson said: “Now, you might think that making a steamed syrup sponge when you're impatient to eat it is madness since they take hours to steam, but I have an alternative method. I give it a brief blast in the you-know-what [microwave].”
Eat it all at once
Nigella also recommends eating the sponge in one sitting, as it can become stodgy and dense if kept. She added: “While I have nothing against stodge, what strikes me whenever I eat this, is how ridiculously light the sponge is. All too often this kind of pud is disparaged these days as dense, when this is far from the case. Freshly steamed, the sponge has a feathery and open texture; it’s only on keeping that it becomes indigestibly heavy. In other words, you have to make the supreme sacrifice and eat it all up at once.”
“This version differs from the traditional model in one way only; it’s cooked in a trice in the microwave. It’s like being rewarded for impatience! All I require with this golden treasure is copious amounts of cool double cream, though I concede there are undeniable arguments to be made on behalf of custard or ice cream.”
Ingredients and method
To make Nigella's syrup sponge, you'll need the following ingredients: 125g very soft unsalted butter, plus 10g for greasing the pudding bowl; 200g golden syrup; 125g granulated sugar; 1 lemon, finely zested, ½ juiced (approx. 30ml); 125g self-raising flour; ¼ tsp fine salt; 2 large free-range eggs, at room temperature; and 300ml double cream, to serve.
To start, grease a 2-pint plastic pudding basin and its lid using 10g of butter, then measure out the golden syrup into it before setting this aside. Add the butter, sugar, lemon zest, flour, salt and eggs into a mixing bowl and thoroughly combine using a processor, later adding in the lemon juice. Once combined, pour the batter into the prepared pudding basin on top of the golden syrup, avoiding mixing them together as the syrup is meant to stay in a separate layer. Smooth out the edges of the batter, then clip the lid onto the basin, or tightly wrap with several layers of cling film if you don't have a lid, and cook the pudding in the microwave at 750W for six minutes.
Allow the pudding to stand in the microwave for a further two minutes before removing it. Take off the lid or cling film and place a lipped plate or shallow bowl over the pudding basin. Then carefully turn it the other way up, with the upended pudding basin on the plate. Give it a gentle shake and the pudding should come free. Finally, cut the pudding into slices and serve with cold double cream — or custard, if you prefer.
