Sticky moments

Steamed, baked or microwaved, sponge and suet puddings ought to be our culinary answer to the soufflé.

All too often, however, duff puddings have been identified with the worst of institutional catering. At times it has seemed the only relic of a former culinary glory has been Ullswater hotel Sharrow Bay's sticky toffee pudding and its imitations.

The steamed puddings of today are a far cry from the hot, sweet puddings that were baked or boiled in a bag during their first flush of popularity early in the eighteenth century - thanks to George II's appetite for them. They ranged from light puddings to the forerunners of Christmas pudding.

Victorian cooks, consequently, inherited many hundreds of distinct recipes. By the end of the last century the list had extended to thousands. Every town, university college and famous household boasted its own house speciality. Since then, there has been a gradual genteel decline of steamed puds.

One exception is the Old Fire Engine House in Ely, Cambridgeshire. The restaurant has kept its place in the Good Food Guide for the past 23 years. In that time, despite the pretensions of nouvelle cuisine and modern British cooking, it has stuck to what it does best - traditional English food. It uses an antique steamer for its puddings and the recipes would be familiar to Mrs Beeton. Customers can book ahead and order their favourites - syrup, chocolate, ginger, marmalade or spotted dick.

Elsewhere, there are signs that steamed puds are making a comeback. Rick Stein, for instance, bakes individually portioned syrup sponges in a microwave. Quaglino's does a hot pud based on a Yorkshire parkin. The Pudding Club has a loyal following. And on TV, Delia Smith has shown millions of viewers how to prepare sticky gingerbread puddings with ginger wine and brandy sauce.

If the pudding revival is to gain momentum and diversify, chefs will have to go back to school and understand the basic technology. Here goes…

Sweetness and light

Take a pound cake, a Victoria sandwich or a génoise: they have more or less the same ingredients, though in different proportions, and they have contrasting textures. Hot sponges are similar. You can juggle the recipes or the method, but the ingredients must balance. The key elements are flavour, structure and air.

Flour - how strong should it be? Standard textbooks, such as LJ Hanneman's Patisserie, prefer cake (soft) flour because it is thought to produce a more tender, melting texture. Some chefs, however, use bread (strong) flour because it has more structure when mixed with other ingredients.

Many Victorian recipes combine a proportion of plain flour with fresh, white breadcrumbs, a method that Terri Kindred at the Old Fire Engine House uses. This should give an open, fragile texture. Ground almonds have a similar effect.

It is worth noting that self-raising flour can vary in strength or change its character if poorly stored.

Scone flour Pastry cooks prepare their own concentrated version of self-raising flour by combining 480g plain flour with 30g baking powder. This is three times the strength of a standard miller's self-raising flour and must be diluted according to the recipe balance. Store the flour in airtight containers.

Eggs The better the quality of the eggs, with regard to freshness and source, the better the texture of the pudding. When formulating recipes, work with eggs by weight rather than number.

Fats Soft pastry margarines and shortenings have been designed for ease of creaming. Good creaming is essential for beating in air. However, they lack the flavour of a fine unsalted butter. If butter is used, it must be softened but not allowed to oil before being used.

Sugars Caster sugar is the standard choice - it is easier to cream than granulated - but soft brown sugar, syrup or treacle can add interesting flavour notes. These all contain extra moisture so recipes may need adjusting when, say, using brown muscavado sugar instead of caster.

What can go wrong? A saggy centre is caused by either too much baking powder, which breaks the structure, or too much sugar, which makes the crumb sticky and prevents it from rising.

Collapsing A pudding with too much milk in it may keep its volume in the oven and then collapse when it is removed because the steam-pressure falls (similar to the effect with soufflés).

Not enough volume This or too much fat or sugar will produce the same effect as outlined above.

Ruptured top Either the ingredients have been overmixed, after the addition of flour, or the flour may have been too strong and altered the recipe balance. Alternatively, there may not be enough sugar or fat.

Adding flavourings Essences such as vanilla or almond should go into the mixture at the creaming stage. The same applies to grated zests.

Add preserved ginger or dried fruit by rolling in flour and folding into the mixture.

To add chocolate, substitute 45g cocoa powder for the equivalent amount of flour. Phil Vickery at the Castle, Taunton, Somerset, adds extra finely chopped chocolate to the mixture. To add spices, sift ground spices in with the flour.

Microwaved steamed puddings Microwaves reduce steaming time from hours to a few minutes. They make the lightest possible sponges, but they are not infallible.

If microwaved for too long, the overcooked pudding will be dry and powdery. The structure of the protein and gluten in the egg and flour may rupture and the pudding will collapse.

The more power, wattage or kilowattage, the oven has, the faster a pudding will steam - 700W is an ideal rating.

The cooking times at 700W will vary according to the size of the pudding, the ingredients used, moisture content and the efficiency of the oven. To microwave a pudding successfully it should not be more than 35mm (1in) from surface to centre at any point.

A typical syrup sponge, weighing about 450g, requires four minutes at 700W. It must also be allowed to stand for a further three minutes before being served. However, individual portions microwaved to order will take a fraction of the time and chefs must work out exactly how many seconds each recipe will take.

Baked sponges The tendency among chefs is to bake sponge puddings in rectangular trays rather than steam them. The advantages are that they can be prepared in advance, cooled and reheated and they are easy to portion. The basic recipes for these are not very different from steamed sponges. In other words, they have all evolved from the original pound cakes. The difference is that most chefs try to reformulate recipes so that they are lighter and more fluffy.

Nobody has had more influence on baked sponges than Francis Coulson of Sharrow Bay. His sticky toffee pudding has been copied by hundreds of chefs in every sector of the industry. Over the years his recipe has altered (both the base and the topping) and he has changed the name to Icky Sticky Toffee Sponge, but the basic method is the same. n

Steamed Pudding

For the standard sugar batter or creamed method follow nine steps for success every time:

1. Always work with ingredients that are all at a temperature of 18-21ºC.

2. Cream 150g of castor sugar with 150g butter. Done properly, this takes about 10 minutes with a machine - obviously longer by hand.

3. Lightly whisk 150g of egg. If using a machine, pour it on to the creamed mixture in a slow stream, while still beating. This takes a couple of minutes from start to finish.

4. Sift 240g of soft flour and 15g baking powder. Fold into batter delicately to avoid making lumps.

5. Work in up to 4tbs milk so that the batter has a dropping consistency - that is, it just falls off the spoon.

6. Spoon into a pudding basin (about 2 pints).

7. Cover with a cartouche of silicone paper. Fasten a pleated foil lid(to allow for expansion) on top.

8. Steam for one hour. Individual 120g/4oz puddings take about 35 minutes to steam. If you steam puddings in a saucepan or bain-marie, the water should boil throughout. A good trick is to stand the basin on a folded tea-towel.

9. Remove from the steamer, stand for a couple of minutes and turn the pudding out.