Golden Syrup pudding holds fond childhood memories for me. Sitting in my nightgown with my sister at a little blue table watching Mad Movies with Bob Monkhouse and eating dessert. Sometimes it was Tapicoa or apple dumplings, baked apples stuffed with dates and brown sugar or Queen pudding or just maybe - my absolute favourite - which I promise to share with you another day, Banana Fritters.

Today though it was a Golden Syrup pudding kind of day, cold wind, threatening clouds and spots of rain throughout a very cold and dreary day. Just the kind of day for cold weather food.

I’d made a huge pot of thick vegetable soup and some fresh dinner rolls, but I thought that the hordes at the dinner table might still be hungry, so a dessert as a little something extra seemed right.

Golden Syrup pudding is one of those things that you can make when you really only have the basics in the house. In NZ there is almost always a tin of Golden Syrup sitting in the cupboard with a sticky lid jammed on top.

I found one of those teeny tiny bottles of whiskey sitting forlornly in the pantry from a Christmas gift and a few bits of crystallised ginger winked at me as I grabbed the whiskey, so this was what I came up with.

Golden Syrup Pudding with Whiskey & Ginger

This pudding has a soft cake like top with a smooth thick golden sauce which bubbles underneath. This pudding comes together and is ready for the oven in roughly 5 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180C/350F and have a 10 inch, deep pie dish ready for your pudding.

Base

• 1 1/2 cups of self raising flour
• 1/4 cup of soft brown sugar (first measure)
• 100 grams of butter - melted
• 1 tspn vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup of crystalised ginger - chopped roughly
• 2 Tblspns good Whiskey
• 1 large free range egg
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1 Tblspn Golden syrup ( first measure)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (second measure)
• 1 Tblspn cornflour

Sauce

• 2 Tblspns  Golden Syrup
• 1 1/2 cups boiling water
• 30 grams of butter
• 1 tspn Whiskey

Combine your flour and first measure of brown sugar - mix together squashing any lumps. Add in your chopped ginger.

Add in your milk, whiskey, egg, vanilla, first measure of golden syrup, and melted butter. Mix until combined. Pour into your dish that you are going to make your pudding in.

Combine your second measure of brown sugar and cornflour in a small bowl - mix together and sprinkle over the top of your pudding.

Combine your sauce ingredients in a heat proof jug and pour over the top of your pudding.

Cook for roughly 40-45 minutes.

When you take your pudding out of the oven it should look something like this. Crackled on the top with a thick sauce bubbling underneath.

The sauce will be thick from the cornflour that you added on to the top.

If you are worried about giving this dessert to children, don’t be. The alcohol is all cooked off in the oven and all you are left with is a very subtle flavour. Isaac gave this warm gooey pudding a “100% tastiness rating” ..  I’m happy with that!

We had ours with a little plain yoghurt poured over the top.

It was just the perfect thing .. at the end of a grey day.

This is worth buying Golden Syrup for -

100 percent tastiness rating - guaranteed by Isaac.

I can just see all you lovely American people sitting there thinking ” what on earth is  Hokey Pokey?” Hokey Pokey is also called honeycomb candy in the US. These little cookies have the same flavour. Hokey Pokey is also an icecream flavour here in NZ. One of my favourites in fact. In the UK, Crunchie Bars and Violet Crumble have the same flavour as these cookies.They are not the most fancy pants cookie out there, but there is something very more-ish about them, they are very crisp and have a warm flavour.

These were always one of my favourites as a child growing up. I could smell them cooking and I knew I would find one of them tucked into my lunch box the next day. This is the first time I’ve made these for a very long time. I was flicking through my trusty Edmonds Cookbook and spotted the recipe for them. The Edmonds Cookbook is almost a standard addition to the cookbook collection in every home in NZ. It was first published in 1908, so it’s over 100 years old! Recipes have been updated, removed and added during that time. But the old favourites remain. This is one of them.

Hokey Pokey Cookies

• 125 grams of butter
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1 Tblspn of golden syrup
• 1 Tblspn of milk
• 1 1/2 cups of plain flour
• 1 tspn of baking soda

Combine the butter, golden syrup, sugar and milk in a saucepan. Melt all of them together until they are almost boiling. Stir the whole time. Be careful here with the heat, or the mixture will stick to the pan.

Remove from the heat and let it cool a little.

Add in the sifted flour and baking soda and stir well to make the cookie dough. Roll into walnut sized balls, place on baking parchment and flatten with the bottom of a glass.

Bake at 180C/350F for roughly 15 minutes. My oven takes a little less than this. Anything with golden syrup will burn quickly, so keep a little eye on the cookies, and when they are an even golden brown in colour remove from the oven.

Cool on a rack. Makes roughly 2 dozen.

Great to pop into a lunch box or have with a hot drink.