Steamed Treacle Sponge

It was my birthday last Thursday and Chayne treated me to a few gifts for our kitchen cupboard. Unlike the small pudding basins she bought me for Christmas last year, I'm determined that these gifts actually make it out of the cupboard and are put to good use. The tongs she bought me have already been used for a sandwich - the contents of which I shall not mention on this vegetarian blog - and on Saturday I used my new 1 litre pudding steamer from Lakeland to make this steamed treacle sponge. I could have made a fancy sauce to go with it and drizzled it over the top for the purposes of the picture but we cracked open a can of ambrosia custard. It was great and Chayne was so pleased with how it turned out she insisted that I pose with the pud.

Ingredients
175g butter
175g light muscavado sugar
3 large eggs
1 tbsp treacle
175g self-raising flour


Recipe
1) You need a 1 litre pudding basin for this. My new pudding steamer is brilliant You don't need to grease it and it has a lid which clips on the top so there's no need to faff about with string and foil. However, if you don't have one of these, you'll need to prepare a 1 litre pudding basin. Start by greasing it.
2) Now for the sponge mixture. Beat the butter in a bowl with an electric hand mixer until fluffy. Then add the sugar and continue beating until pale. Add the treacle and beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of flour with the final egg. Finally fold in the flour.
3) Spoon the mixture into your pudding basin and secure the lid. Or, if you don't have a lid, cover the top with a sheet of pleated buttered foil and tie it around the bowl with string.
4) Place your bowl in a large pan, fill with boiling water until it reaches half-way up the basin, put a lid on the pan and simmer for two hours. You may need to top up the water after an hour. Also, if you can't get a lid on your pan (this happened to us), cover the pan with foil.