Treacle tart is easy to make – particularly with this simple recipe. It’s a good last-minute stand-by for when you have friends coming over, and can be eaten either cold with a cup of tea, or hot with custard for a warming winter dessert.

We had guests around at the weekend. This is what we baked for them, to top off a fish pie and a tomato tart.

Ingredients
Pastry
Four very generous tablespoons of golden syrup
Four medium or three large slices of white bread
Juice and grated rind of half a lemon

Method
Start by making your pastry. For an 8-inch (20cm) round flan tin, follow Blagger’s recipe for pastry. Roll it out on a floured surface and use it to line your well-greased tin.

Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius (375 degrees Fahrenheit). While it is heating up, make your bread into breadcrumbs. This is easiest done in a blender if you have one, but can also be done by rubbing dry bread in your hands. Try not to get it too damp and sticky or it will clump together and give you a very lumpy result.

Now put your golden syrup in a non-stick pan and heat it very gently until it turns runny. When runny, stir in the breadcrumbs, lemon juice and rind, and mix well until all of the breadcrumbs are coated with the syrup mixture and you can’t see their white colour any more.

Pour all of this into your pie case and bake it in the oven for 30 minutes, by which point the pastry will be cooked and the filling should be firm.

If you want to eat it right away, be careful: the sugary filling will be very hot.

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