Ever since the pudding episode of the 'Great British Bake Off' I have been craving puddings. Not fancy, delicate or fine puddings.... I want big fat, sweet & stodgy, puddings - the sort you got dished up as a child and sploshed with gallons of yummy yellow custard!
I wanted to make one last weekend and played with the idea of Sticky Toffee pudding....then I dreamt about Jam roly-poly.... but in the end decided it simply had to be Treacle tart! I went shopping to get all the ingredients and deliberatly walked past the 'ready-made-just-heat-in-the-oven' pie determined to channel my inner Mary Berry and make one from scratch myself! I even googled her recipe here.
I got everything home and checked through, trying hard to resist sticking my finger in the golden syrup, only to discover that the bottom of my *special* (not used very often) fluted flan tin had gone missing! I hunted high & low and thought I had found an alternative china pie dish - only to discover that it had a huge hairline crack running through it -disaster! I didn't have anything else suitable or that was not already being used for the Sunday roast so that was that. I could have cried and, having told the kids we were going to have a totally fab pudding-fest, felt really rather bad about the whole thing!
Anyway, by this weekend I'd pretty much forgotten about it and pushed my cravings back in the craving spot (or wherever it is they live when you are not thinking about them) and consoled myself that puddings are just really bad for you anyway. Then this morning, out of the blue, Super-Huzb brought me home a new fluted flan dish! Treacle tart here I come....
Back to googling Mary Berry's recipe and not long after the new flan dish got duly covered in pastry and the extra little strips for the top were prepared. Breadcrumbs were whizzed in the whizzer and a pan of sticky golden syrup was set to warm gently on the hob. A large un-waxed lemon was zested & squeezed and the kitchen smells were mmmmm..delicious!
I also didn't exactly work the classic 'lattice' look either, preferring instead to embellish (aka cheat..) with a few un-woven, twisted pastry strands instead (sorry Mary). I did brush everything with egg so it baked nicely from anaemic to golden brown in the alloted 25-30mins and I managed to stop it from getting burnt by popping some tin foil over the top for the last 10mins- that way it could also go on cooking and I could try to avoid the dreaded 'soggy bottom'.
The last thing you are instructed to do, and probably the most difficult, is to leave it in the tin to settle a while - which when it's all golden sweet, fresh out the oven is pretty hard! It is necessary though otherwise the middle would be too gooey to cut properly.
So here's my finished Treacle Tart! Maybe not the best looker in town but it sure did taste mighty fine and there was very little evidence of a soggy bottom. Of course, it was most definately best served with some yellow stuff too...
I just need to sit with the papers and a bit of Downton now to round off the day nicely!
Happy Sunday :-)
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