Serves 8 – 16
Ingredients
35 ml Butter
400 g Caramel sugar
2 Eggs
10 ml Bicarbonate of soda
30 ml Apricot jam
30 ml Vinegar
525 ml Flour
Pinch of salt
500 ml Milk, at room temperature
SAUCE:
500 ml Cream
200 g Caramel sugar
125 g Butter
250 ml Water
5 ml Caramel essence
Pinch of salt

Method
- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- Grease a 40x25x5cm ovenproof dish.
- Using an electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, one by one, and continue mixing until creamy.
- In a medium size bowl add the bicarbonate of soda to the jam and mix to a smooth paste. Stir in the vinegar. Add this mixture to the egg-and-sugar mixture and mix well.
- Sift together the flour and salt and add this alternatively with the milk to the egg mixture while beating continuously. Beat until a smooth and very runny batter without any lumps.
- Pour the batter into the prepared dish and bake for 45-60 minutes.
Sauce:
- Place all the ingredients in a medium sized, heavy-based saucepan, and slowly bring to the boil.
- Boil for about 2 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
- Pour the hot sauce over the hot pudding the minute it is taken out of the oven.
- The sponge will hungrily and quite noisily drink it all up.
- Serve warm or hot (even cold will do beautifully the next morning) with the best quality vanilla ice cream you can find.
NB: Use a big enough dish!