Whisky syrup sponge: the perfect pick-me-up

Bringing something golden, sweet and uplifting into your kitchen and life is exactly what is required at this time of year. And it doesn’t get more golden, sweet or uplifting than a syrup sponge. A syrup sponge is a steamed pudding, laced with golden syrup. The pudding itself is made by pouring a cake-style batter into a basin or bowl, sealing it with paper and foil, and then placing it in a half-filled pan of water, where it is gently cooked by the steam, until the sponge is light and risen.

Golden syrup is an inverse sugar, which means it is created in the process of refining sugar, or after a sugar solution has been treated with an acid. Its flavour is distinctive: lighter than honey, like the palest of caramels, with a clean sweetness which tastes almost metallic. It was first made by brothers Charles and John Joseph Eastwich at what was the Abram Lyle & Sons sugar refinery, and later became part of Tate & Lyle. It was originally given or sold cheaply to the refinery factory workers, but has been commercially sold since 1885. Guinness World Records has named the Tate & Lyle golden syrup tins the world’s oldest packaging – although if you look closely at your green tin, you might spot that that the illustration is, in fact, a dead, decomposing lion surrounded by flies. Delicious!

I’ve introduced a Scottish twist to this pud – or, more accurately, a Scotch twist: whisky. Whisky and golden syrup are a perfect match, neither dominating the other, but bringing out the sweet, smoky notes in the whisky, and tempering the zinging, filling-singing sugar of the syrup. The whisky is folded into the pudding batter, but it has the added bonus of thinning the golden syrup that sits at the bottom of the pudding basin and will, when the pudding is served, dribble down from the top of the pud.