January deserves lemon pudding

January kitchens are my favourite. This isn’t anything against Christmas – I love the spice, the frenzy, the ritual of festive cooking, but I also love the aftermath. There’s something calming about the kitchen once it’s all over – nothing is made through obligation, or with a deadline. I embrace the cosiness of autumn and the sparkle of Christmas, but I find the bright, cool light of January reviving and renewing. At this time of year my kitchen is a place to take stock and make stock. To steady and sustain.

It’s also full of puddings, among other things. Proper puddings, hot and sweet and served with cream, are a non-negotiable part of late winter for me. And a lemon self-saucing pudding, baked in the oven, is certainly a proper pudding. It may not have the most elegant of names, but it does tell you what’s going on: a self-saucing pudding – also more lyrically called a ‘lemon delight’ or a ‘lemon surprise’ – is one where a batter is made, but during the process of baking it separates out into a sponge layer and a sauce underneath.

The exact make-up of the dish varies: some are more soufflé than pudding, some vice versa, and the corresponding sauce comes in every texture, from thin cream to a soggy bottom. There are wildly varying ratios of milk to flour, and this is what determines the texture of the sponge and the sauce. The recipe here, I think, is the Goldilocks version: the sponge is light but robust while the sauce is rich and spoonable – and crucially it doesn’t feel like the batter has just accidentally split.

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To make the pudding, you start just as with a sponge, creaming butter and sugar together before adding egg yolks, flour and a surprisingly large amount of milk and lemon juice.