Treacle Tart recipe

Treacle Tart 

We didn't manage to eat the last loaf of bread I baked quickly enough so a third of it went stale. Rather than waste the bread, I tried to think about how we might use up and remembered that I had previously baked a treacle tart using breadcrumbs. We've brought a couple of large tins of Golden Syrup away with us because we like a little in our morning porridge so I had all the ingredients I needed.

Ingredients
4 oz plain white flour
2 oz butter
Cold water

4 large tbsp golden syrup
12 tbsp breadcrumbs
Squeeze of lemon juice

The first three ingredients are to make the pastry shell although you could use bought pastry if you prefer. I made enough for an eight inch diameter pie dish.

Rub the butter into the flour as lightly as you can until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Slowly add cold water, tbsp by tbsp, stirring it in until you have a soft dough. If your dough gets too sticky, you might need to dust it with more flour. Try to handle it as little as possible or your pastry will be hard instead of flaky and crisp!

Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate it for 30 minutes.

Grease a pie tin and put the oven on to preheat to 180c.

Roll out the pastry to about the thickness of a pound coin. Line your pie dish with pastry, trimming off any excess. Prick the pastry base several times with a fork.

Treacle Tart 

Put the golden syrup into a saucepan over a low heat. When it thins, stir in the breadcrumbs. Mix well so all the breadcrumbs are soaked with syrup. They change colour as they do so. Stir in a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice too.

I wasn't sure exactly how much treacle filling I would need so I added a tbsp of syrup and 3 of breadcrumbs to the pan at a time, building up the quantity until it looked enough to fill the pastry shell.

Pour the syrupy breadcrumbs into your pastry shell and place the tart on a baking tray in the preheated oven. The baking tray is in case the tart boils over while cooking. I didn't want golden syrup going everywhere!

Bake at 180c for 25-30 minutes or until the tart filling is bubbling and the pastry is golden. Remove from the oven and set aside for five minutes to give the filling a chance to firm up a little before serving.

You can eat Treacle Tart warm or cold. We had ours warm with a dollop of coconut cream which was delicious. You can also serve it with creme fraiche, cream or ice cream.