Enid Blyton could describe a good feast. These days, the children's author is read less frequently. The Famous Five and Secret Seven books are now considered old-fashioned at best, bigoted at worst. Still, generations of her readers have enjoyed her delicious meals - meat pies, peaches in syrup and, of course, treacle tart.
The ultimate English pudding has a special place in the hearts of the British public. Five Run away Together (1944), the third book in the Famous Five series, includes a supper, rounded off with a "perfectly marvellous treacle tart". How Blyton's readers, emerging from the miseries of wartime, must have salivated over her words!
Blyton is not alone in describing the power of this pudding. In the late 1990s, J. K. Rowling stuck treacle tart on the menu for the Hogwarts welcome feast in The Sorcerer's Stone. And it turned out to be Harry Potter's favourite pudding. Later, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, our hero found himself under a love spell designed to smell of his favourite things: "treacle tart and the woody scent of broomstick handle".
The treat has been mentioned in many pop-culture hits. Take Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, where Alice finds herself at a table with a large dish of treacle tarts. And there's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, written by Ian Fleming of the James Bond novels. In the film version of the story, the treat is used to entrap children.
It's not just for the kids. George Orwell wrote a tribute to British puddings in 1946, including a recipe for treacle tart. With rationing still on, the article was seen as not being in the best of taste.
Finally, no homage to this most iconic of puddings would be complete without mentioning the nation's best-loved cook: Mrs Patmore of Downton Abbey. Imagine the inner glow she must have felt when head butler Mr Carson, not one known for enthusiastic praise, told her: "That treacle tart just hit the spot."
Treacle tart has been hitting the spot for generations. Long may it continue to do so!
Orwell’s treacle tart for 2023
Ingredients
• 140 g cold butter
• 240 g plain flour
• 1 egg
• a pinch of salt
• 400 g golden syrup
• 60 g white breadcrumbs
• ½ tsp of ground ginger
• 1 lemon
Recipe
Add the salt to the plain flour and then crumble the cold butter into the mix. Knead the mix to make a dough, adding the egg and one or two tablespoons of cold water until the dough is firm and not too sticky. Wrap the dough in a cloth and leave to cool in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Heat your oven to 180 °C. Roll out the dough until it fits a 22-centimetre flan tin. Cover the pastry with parchment paper, weigh down with rice and bake blind for 12 minutes.
Mix the ginger, breadcrumbs, golden syrup, two tablespoons of lemon juice and the zest of the lemon. Pour into the pastry case and bake for 20 to 30 minutes. Serve with cream or vanilla ice cream.