I walk through a dessert song

It becomes urgent to post this, because in return mac1235 and tngr_spacecadet will give me more Doctor Who! *fangirlfangirlfangirl*. I'm dying to see the Agatha Christie episode.

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MALVA PUDDING
(traditionally made by way of celebrating the calorie-burning chilliness of Cape winter)
(adapted from Ina Parman's recipe)

Cake:
250ml caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tblsp apricot jam
300ml flour
1 tsp bicarb
pinch salt
30 ml melted butter
1 tsp vinegar
125ml milk
(1 heaped tsp ground ginger, optional)

Sauce:
250ml cream
125g butter
125ml brown sugar
100 ml orange juice
30 ml sherry
(actually, you have about 130ml of liquid to play with as seems good to you - you can use any mix or proportion you like of orange juice, sherry, rum, brandy, weird liqueurs, whatever - be creative. I wouldn't personally recommend gin).

Right, so you sling together the eggs and caster sugar and beat them like hell, until they do that creamy frothy thing. (I use the whisk wossnames on the food processor and let it rip for a couple of minutes, usually while the guests shout to drown out the noise). Then add the apricot jam and give it another whirl - if you don't mix it properly you'll get weird jammy bits. You should, incidentally, use that hyper-smooth and unnatural low-quality apricot jam, anything with chunks of real fruit in it is (a) a waste, and (b) doesn't work, said chunks being too heavy for the mixture. If you've used a food processor you'll need to decant the egg mix into a largish bowl at this point.

Sift together the flour, bicarb, salt (and ginger, if using) into a small bowl, and leave with sieve poised. Mix the milk, vinegar and melted butter in a jug, completely ignoring the fact that the butter will promptly solidify and make bits. Let it, it's just teasing.

Sift about a third of the already-sifted dry ingredients into the eggy creamy apricotty mix. Carefully fold it in. Add about a third of the liquid mix and do likewise. Repeat procedure twice more with remaining two-thirds of both mixtures, alternating them, to give you an equation which looks something like P=3(FD/3 + FL/3) which you have arrived at by a process almost, but not quite, completely unlike integration. (wolverine_nun, stop wincing. I can reduce that equation to P=F(D+L), but it would hardly be useful). By the end of it you should have everything mixed together and no ingredients left except those for the sauce. Now is the time to realise that you should have turned the oven on to 180^oC before you started all this.

Reverently tip the fluffy mixture into a greased baking dish - I use a squarish pyrex one about 20cm across, and it'll need to be at least 6cm deep or you'll have interesting sauce catastrophes later. Bake at 180^oC for about 45 mins, or until it does the requisite springy-back cooked-cake thing when prodded.

While it's cooking, heat the sauce ingredients in a saucepan - you don't want to actually boil them or you'll get fudge, but you need to melt the sugar and butter and reduce the whole thing to a smooth creamy evil artery-hardening sauce. When the cake is cooked, poke it lavishly with something to make deep holes in it, right through to the bottom (I use a kebab stick), which will assist in the absorption of said evil sauce, and sling said sauce over it. You'll then need to leave it on the counter for about ten minutes for the cake to slurp up the sauce. It's usually worth standing over it with a wooden spoon as guests tend to stick their fingers in to sample the sauce, and rapping the knuckles of unrestrained samplers is one of a cook's innocent joys.

This makes a dense, rich, thoroughly unhealthy pudding, traditionally served hot with custard, only I'm usually too lazy to make the custard. And dashed good too.

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Last Night I Dreamed: epic quests with a group of animal companions. Hills, rivers and Significant Fountains were involved. Possibly also picnics. Memo to self: must go and see Prince Caspian.