I recently received a plea for help from a friend who had managed to smuggle a tin of contraband golden syrup over the Atlantic and was looking to recreate the “scrummy treacle tarts” she remembered from her English childhood.

A rustic treacle tart - dedicated to Wendy's memories of home...

The problem is I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth - and treacle tart is as sweet as it gets - but I couldn’t leave a girl in distress and so started looking through some old cookbooks.

Classic treacle tart recipes use a simple mixture of golden syrup (interestingly not treacle), stale bread crumbs and lemon juice. Some chefs lighten the mix with cream and egg and Oliver Peyton goes further by using cake crumbs as a less dense alternative to bread. Heston Blumenthal adds vanilla infused sea salt, which is a nice touch, but the 100 hour low oven syrup “ageing” he recommends is a bit beyond the limits of my short attention span.

In the end I opted for the decidedly non-traditional addition of ginger, which I think gives the tart a more interesting flavour, and served it with candied ginger ice cream to really upset the calorie counters and dental hygienists.

Try my recipe for ginger and treacle tart.

Did it meet the brief? I’ll let you know when I hear back. Wendy, over to you!