Recipe: Microwave Lemon & Thyme Sponge Puddings

A couple of years ago I made a bit of a breakthrough in making quick puddings for my family. I made a jam sponge in the microwave and that’s been our go to speedy pudding at home for a little while. As much as we all love jam sponge (and we really love jam sponge) I thought it was time to ring the changes. This weekend I made Lemon & Thyme Sponge Puddings in the microwave and they were really rather good. Good enough to give to guests who think you’re more Mary Berry than you actually are.

Easy Recipe: Microwave Lemon & Thyme Sponge Puddings

These fab little puddings are great to throw together in a hurry and take just 3 minutes to cook in the microwave. We have a microwave oven which is just the thing for cooking these speedy puds. Just make sure you cook the Lemon & Thyme Sponge Puddings one at a time and maybe check how your pudding is doing after two minutes or so.

I’ve used fresh thyme in these sponge puddings, which I admit is fairly unusual. We have fresh thyme in the garden and it is one of my favourite herbs. Don’t be tempted to used dried thyme in these puds, I don’t think dried would work. If you don’t have fresh then just leave the thyme out altogether.

Lemon & Thyme Sponge Puddings

Ingredients (serves four)
4oz butter or margarine
4oz sugar
2 eggs
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon of thyme leaves, picked from the stalk
1 teaspoon baking powder
4oz self raising flour

To top the puddings –
Lemon curd
Thyme leaves
Custard

Method
With an electric hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice and thyme leaves and combine. Tip the flour and baking powder into the bowl with the rest of the ingredients and beat together.

Lightly grease four microwave proof ramekins. Fill each one 3/4 of the way full with the sponge mix. Loosely cover with cling film, allowing some extra room for the sponge to steam and rise. Microwave each one individually for three minutes. You might want to check how they’re getting on after 2 minutes or so. Your sponges need to be cooked through but not overdone.

Once cooked, run a knife around the edge and tip them out onto a plate.

Put two heaped dessert spoons of lemon curd into a microwavable dish and warm through for 30 seconds. Stir until it is the consistency of a sauce and drizzle over the top of your sponge, scatter some fresh thyme leaves over and serve with custard. Delicious!

Easy Recipe: Microwave Lemon & Thyme Sponge Puddings

Lemon and thyme sponge pudding

Five Delicious Vegetarian Comfort Food Dishes

I turned vegetarian when I was 13 and there’s not a lot I miss, but on a cold winter night I do sometimes hanker after the slow cooked, deep flavoured chilli my Nan used to make. Thankfully after lots of practice I’ve finally nailed the recipe and managed to make it vegetarian too.

Most of the warming comfort food dishes from my childhood were meat based – family roast dinners, my Nan’s amazing beef chilli, corned beef hash, shepherd’s pie and bubbling stews cooked so long the meat almost melted in your mouth.

There’s something about cooking up some comfort food which makes you feel like you’re showing your family some extra love. I enjoy throwing a few things in the slow cooker and knowing that by tea time there will be a delicious meal ready for my family.

Vegetarian comfort food can feel a bit hard to come by, so I’ve created and shared some of our favourite family recipes on my blog, here are five of my favourite vegetarian comfort food recipes –

Vegetarian Galletes

These are a recent addition to my comfort food repertoire. They’re really easy to make, utterly delicious and once you get the hang of it you can fill them however you want. I made a Goats Cheese, Caramelised Onion and Quince Galette and a Feta, Red Pesto & Tomato Galette. Both were absolutely bang on and real crowd pleasers.

Cauliflower Cheese Soup

Now autumn is here my soup making pot is starting to see some serious action. Cauliflowers are cheap and plentiful in the shops, so I recreated my favourite soup, but with a cheesy twist. Try my very delicious Norwegian inspired Cauliflower Cheese Soup.

Spanish Style Bravas Sausage Casserole

I’d had it in my head to make a big Spanish style bravas sausage casserole in my slow cooker for a while. This summer hadn’t been up to much and I was desperate to start rustling up comfort food dishes, and this was the first one of the season. I made my sausage casserole with Quorn sausages, but you could very easily make them with your favourite meaty sausages if you’d prefer. I made the sauce in the slow cooker and let it bubble away gently to itself for a few hours. The recipe is really simple and it’s now a firm family favourite.

Authentic Armenian style Imam Bayildi

Imam Bayildi is basically stuffed, baked aubergines. They’re simple to make, you can prepare them ahead of time and then cook them when you need them and they are melt in the mouth gorgeous. I like to use good quality ingredients in this recipe as every single mouthful zings flavour. Fresh vegetables and herbs are essential, they’re packed full of flavour and these sunshiny aubergines are a little bit of summer on a cold autumn evening.

Easy Microwave Jam Sponge

No vegetarian comfort food round-up would be complete without a pudding. This incredibly easy to make and very quick to cook microwave jam sponge is just the ticket to warm your cockles on a cold winter evening. All you need are a few store cupboard ingredients, ten minutes of your time and you’ve got a good pud that’ll make your family smile.

Voucherbox.co.uk have a great blog post about the five healthy foods that can actually save you money, and if you want even more money off your online shop they also have plenty of Sainsbury’s vouchers which you can use.

vegetarian comfort food

Easy Recipe: Speedy Microwave Jam Sponge

In the early 1980s my Grandma (who was a professional cook) got herself a microwave and dedicated her retirement to figuring out how to use it. Her microwave cheffing was never considered a success. You could break your teeth on her sponge cakes and her scrambled eggs bounced. Everything which came out of her microwave was a disaster, which was enormously disappointing for someone who could make patisserie that would make French Chefs weep with jealousy.

I have shied away from microwave cookery, bar reheating leftovers, pinging ready meals and giving jacket potatoes a head start; the thought of baking a cake in the microwave sends me straight back to 1985 and I was resolved never to try it. That was until I was sent a jar of Duerr’s Rhubarb and Custard Homebaking Jam, the jam has been formulated to behave itself when heated, so it doesn’t go chewy like other jams might. Additionally it tastes just like those rhubarb and custard sweets I used to be addicted to as a child.

We decided it would be best to make a jam sponge and custard with this really lovely yummy jam (I had already liberally smeared some on a croissant for quality control purposes). I love steamed puddings, but who has the time? So I decided it was worth me tentatively experimenting with a microwaved version, what’s the worst that can happen?

I made my usual sponge recipe and popped it in the microwave for four minutes, checked it, decided it needed another two minutes and it was perfect. It was by far the lightest, fluffiest sponge pudding we’ve had in a long, long time. It took just ten minutes from weighing the ingredients to pouring custard over the finished pudding and filling our faces. This really is the perfect pudding if you need something quick, warming, universally popular and drowned in custard.

My microwave is 850 watts, yours may be different, so it might be best, at least the first time you make this, to reduce the cooking time, check it, and then check it ever minute until it’s cooked to your satisfaction. I originally guessed at 4 minutes, but my 850 watt microwave took 6 minutes to get to sponge perfection.

Microwaved Jam Sponge Pudding (serves 6)
Ingredients:
4oz Sugar
4oz Butter or Margarine (I always use Stork)
2 medium eggs
4oz self raising flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
Half a jar of Jam (I used Duerr’s Rhubarb and Custard Homebaking Jam)

Method:
1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Stir through the eggs.
2. Sift in the flour and baking powder and gently combine.
3. Dollop your jam on the bottom of a large microwavable bowl, gently (very gently so as not to disturb the jam) dollop the sponge mixture on top of the jam and smooth it so it’s fairly evenly distributed.
4. Microwave for six minutes (check this often as it’s really easy to quickly overcook things in the microwave).
5. Once cooked, remove carefully from the microwave and eat while it’s still warm.

Serve with custard, cream or ice cream, or whatever takes your fancy.

This is ridiculously quick and easy, incredibly tasty and really, really popular. I think my Grandma would be really proud that I finally cracked the mystery of microwave baking.

Easy Recipe: Speedy Microwave Jam Sponge