Treacle Tart

Dish: Treacle Tart

Difficulty: Easy, but I cheated on the pastry

Utensils Used: Spatula, scales, food processor

Cock Ups: A couple

Recipe Book: BBC Food

Cooking: So the Boyfriend's mum had some short crust pastry that was going out of date. I volunteered to take it off her hands for a Disaster Kitchen experiment. Boyfriend wanted quiche, I wanted sweet pie. Specifically, treacle tart. This was partly a craving, and partly because I'd tidied out the cupboards and found two massive jars of golden syrup that Boyfriend bought when he went through a phase of making ginger biscuits. I figured treacle tart would be a good way of using up one of them. (Yes, that is my laptop balanced on the bread bin - I use it for the recipes, and for tunes.)

First stage was to roll out the pastry. I cut off a bit of it and made a start, only to soon realise I wasn't making a nice even rectangle/square, but a demented butterfly.

So I put that to one side and started again.

With the pastry big enough to cover the dish my mum lent me (I'm sure she's getting sick of my weird and wonderful kitchen requests, and my tendency to phone her and ask what to do with random ingredients...) I set about trying to trim it to size. It fit most of the way, and with a bit of patching, I was able to make a pretty solid base.

Next up was the filling. I weighed 3oz of bread, not sure if I needed to cut the crusts off or not, opting to cut them off just in case.

This was then turned into bread crumbs in the food processor.

I then added the zest of one lemon. I tried to buy one of those zester tools, but the local supermarket didn't have one, so I had to resort to grating. Effective, sometimes a little too much - I think I got quite a lot of pith as well. Some ginger was also added at some point.

Then I had the tactile pleasure of measuring out 1lb of golden syrup. 

This was then mixed in with the breadcrumbs, which required some muscle initially, though as they combined it did become easier to stir.

Although, it did look a little like vomit...

To finish, I got the butterfly back and sliced him into thin strips.

With the treacle breadcrumb mix poured into the case...

...it was then just a case of layering over the pastry strips. I didn't secure some very well, having cut them a little short, so I was a bit worried they would come apart from the edge and disappear into the filling. Oops.

Cook for 30 mins at 190C!

Washing Up Required: Very little (discount hot chocolate mug, ice cream carton and new lunchbox!) but quite a lot of it was very very sticky.

Result: The whole house smelled delicious. My fear that the strips might sink into the filling did prove to be founded, but overall, I was pleased with the appearance.

Taste Test: This was lovely with a bit of custard. Sickly as hell, but that's treacle tart for you.

The Boyfriend, who had debated recipes with me beforehand, told me it was nice, but it just wasn't right without cornflake topping. After much heated debate, we have agreed to disagree about this detail. If he ever makes treacle tart, he can include his horrible cornflakes, but I won't be eating any.

Overall Result: Easy, tasty, not good for the New Year's Resolutions. Perfect!

Treacle Tart