The first time I ate treacle pudding, the steamed syrup-soaked sponge cake, in England, I was speechless. How a country could sit on a culinary secret like that and never breathe a word about it to its revolutionary cousins was beyond me. The impossibly light and porous cake saturated with, well, treacly liquid coated my tongue and teeth with a nectar so sticky it took a glass of port to cut the sweetness.
Fast-forward a decade or so and, thanks to the British foods aisle at Publix, I was able to indulge my nostalgia for treacle with a can of the Heinz variety. I copped out and followed the microwave instructions, which require about a minute-and-a-half instead of what seems like an eternity in the steamer. I can't say this canned batch was as sublime as my treacle initiation, but it was pretty bloody good, and well, it was here.
