Steamed Ginger Pudding

There's a particular kind of damp, dark evening, somewhere in late October or early November, when the light goes by half past four and the rain hasn't quite made up its mind. That's when a steamed pudding stops being an idea and becomes dinner.

I know steamed puddings have a reputation for being fussy and old-fashioned. They aren't. You cream some butter and sugar, fold in flour and spice, tip it into a basin, and leave it over simmering water for two hours while you do something else. The oven stays off. The kitchen slowly fills with the smell of ginger and dark treacle and warm sugar, and by the time you're hungry, it's ready. That's the whole thing.

The stem ginger is what makes this one worth writing down. Little pockets of soft, hot ginger through the sponge, with the ground ginger giving the background warmth and the treacle doing the dark, bitter edge. A pudding that tastes like it means something. We're only making dinner, but we may as well end it properly.

Cold double cream, poured from a jug so it pools around the base and starts to melt into the sponge. Or hot custard, if the weather has really turned. I wrote it down in the notebook: ginger, treacle, cream, Tuesday. That was enough to remember it by.