Banana and honey pudding

  
This delicious banana and honey steamed pudding is the perfect 'winter warmer' dessert. It's best served with warm custard but if you prefer it can also be enjoyed with cream or a scoop of your favourite ice cream.

This honey and banana pudding is extremely soft and moist and will certainly appeal to those with a sweet tooth! While it's not a fast process to steam the pudding, the results are well worth the wait!

To make this banana and honey pudding you will need:

• 180g Self Raising Flour

• 180g Unsalted Butter

• 180g Soft Light Brown Sugar

• 2 Large Bananas

• 3 Large Eggs

• 3 Tablespoons of Just Bee Original Vitamin Honey

• A large sized mixing bowl

• A large pan/stock pot with lid

• A 1 litre pudding basin

• A heat proof trivet, ramekin, small dish or similar.

• Kitchen foil

Time to make and steam: 2 hours and 20 mins.

Difficulty: Moderate/High

Banana and honey steamed pudding preparation

1: Start by preparing the pudding basin.

Cut a small corner off of the butter and use that to grease all over the inside of the basin. Next add 3 tablespoons of Just Bee honey into the bottom of the basin (which will be the top when we turn it out!). Take one of the bananas and cut it into slices - they don't have to be super thin or particularly even slices - then lay them on top of the honey. Once the bottom of the basin is covered you can stand some up around the bottom edges of the basin too if you have some left. Once all the banana slices are arranged in the basin, put it aside for now.

2: Mix the butter, sugar and eggs

Next we need to cream the butter and sugar together in our mixing bowl. Cut the butter into chunks and add to the bowl. Add the soft brown sugar and cream together using a fork or spoon or a combination of both, whatever method you find easiest. (Top tip: Take the butter out of the fridge early to get it up to room temperature, it will be much easier to work with). Once blended add the 3 eggs and mix well.

3: Add mashed banana and the flour

Mash the other banana on a small plate and add that into the mix and beat together until you have a smooth, combined runny mix. Don't worry if there are some small lumps of banana in the mix - it doesn't need to be completely homogeneous. Finally add the flour and mix until all the flour 'disappears' into the batter.

4: Fill the pudding basin

Next, transfer the batter into the pudding basin, go easy at first as you don't want to disturb the honey and banana too much. I started by using a large spoon then once the honey and banana are covered gently pour the rest of the batter into the basin. You should have a little space left for the pudding to rise, after steaming your pudding it should be almost perfectly level with the top of the basin.

Cooking your banana and honey pudding

Steaming the pudding is a slow process but not a difficult one providing you have suitable tools for the job and follow our fairly fool-proof method. Your pudding basin needs to fit easily inside your pan/stock pot, I have a 6.2 litre stainless steel stock pot that I got from Dunelm for £20 to make family stews and curries in. It works perfectly and it can easily accommodate the 1 litre pudding basin standing on a small trivet or upturned dish.

Use whatever you have in the cupboard, the important things are that the basin is slightly off the bottom of the pot and that the pot has a good fitting lid so that the pudding basin is surrounded by steam inside the pot.

If you've never done this before and it sounds confusing there are a number of videos on Youtube if you search for 'How to steam a pudding on a hob'. Once you have your steaming set up organised you can move on to step five below!

5: Prepare your pudding basin

Cover your basin with some foil and fold a pleat in the top to allow for some room for expansion. Then place inside the pot. We are now ready to start the steaming process!

6: Start the steaming

Boil a kettle and carefully pour the water around the sides of your basin until the water comes about half way up your pudding basin. Put the lid on the pot and bring back to the boil. Once boiling turn your hob down until you have a very gentle simmer. We only need enough heat to keep producing steam, not a ferocious boil.

7: Make sure your pan doesn't boil dry!

Now steam the pudding for a total of 2 hours. Many steaming recipes will stress the importance of not letting your pan boil dry, but we don't want to be standing watching over this continually, so set your timer for 1 hour and keep an eye on the water level during this first hour of cooking.

At roughly the half way point, top the water back up to the level it was and then steam for another hour. If it didn't boil dry in the first hour then it won't in the second hour! So you can relax a little more during the second half of the cooking. This gives you time to clean up or put the kettle on again for a cuppa!

8: Check to see if the pudding is cooked

After the 2 hours, check your pudding is cooked by pushing a skewer or chopstick down into the centre of the pudding, it should come out clean. If it doesn't then continue steaming for another 10 minutes. Be careful taking the lid off, the steam will be hot and there will be quite a lot built up inside the pan!

9: Remove your pudding from the basin

When your pudding is fully cooked carefully remove from the pan (using a tea towel or oven gloves to protect your hands) and run a knife around the sides of the basin. Put a large plate on the top of the basin and carefully, but quickly, invert onto your counter top. The basin should come away easily and the excess honey will pour down the sides of the pudding - yummy!

Ideas and options

If you fancy spicing up this pudding then adding a teaspoon of ginger or cinnamon at Stage 3, works really well.

You can also use this recipe to make many other similar puddings by simply replacing the bananas, with nuts or another fruit. You can also make a simple honey sponge dessert by just removing the banana altogether!