Following a bit of a kitchen disaster I was rescued by The Pirate’s Wife. Here is her take on an absolute belter of a pudding: 

This is a light and fluffy sponge pudding, not heavy and stodgy like the school dinner ones. It’s vegetarian friendly as it contains no suet and the citrus cuts through the syrup so it’s not too sickly. If you haven’t got time to steam, you can microwave the pudding but the texture will be much heavier and remember not to use foil to cover the basin.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 175g self raising flour
• 175g butter
• 175g caster sugar 
• Zest of one lemon, lime or orange
• Juice of 1 lime, 1 lemon or 1 small orange
• 3 tbs milk 
• 8-10 tbs golden syrup

Method
Make a cake batter by beating the butter and sugar together until light in colour and fluffy. Slowly add the 3 beaten eggs. Don’t add the eggs too quickly or else the mixture will curdle. It will still taste great but the texture will be more dense. Fold in the flour, zest, milk and half the juice of the citrus fruit, being careful not to knock all of the air out of the mixture.

Grease a 1 litre basin with butter. You can use a bigger bowl but no smaller. In the bottom of the bowl pour 8-10 tablespoons of golden syrup and add the remaining citrus juice. Carefully spoon the cake mixture on top of the syrup and fruit juice.

Cover the basin with a foil lid and tie securely around the lip of the basin. Ideally put a pleat in the foil lid. This cane be tricky but there are plenty of clips on YouTube to show you how. Place the covered bowl in a large saucepan on top of a saucer and add boiling water so that it reaches about half way up the basin. Steam for around 2 hours.

Be very careful when turning out, the bowl will be very hot and the syrup can burn.
Serve with custard, cream or a good vanilla ice cream.

As always, please send feedback to piratespantry@gmail.com