Steamed pudding

Steamed puddings are traditional, although perhaps butter is a little extravagent!

Ingredients
butter
sugar
self raising flour
2 eggs
several spoonfuls of jam

Equipment

bowl for mixing
spoon
food mixer
bowl for steaming
foil
saucepan
knife and plate to turn out (optional)

time cooking: 2 hours

preparation time:
making cake mix

This is a minimal recipe. At the end, I suggest some additional or substitute ingredients.

Weigh out the butter and sugar and . Then beat in the eggs, then the . You should end up with quite a stiff dough.
Put several spoonfuls of jam into the bottom of the steaming bowl (which should be heat-proof, obviously). Spoon the the mix on top. It doesn't matter how lumpy it is, as it will flatten out when cooking. Cover the top of the bowl with foil, crumpled round the edge to make sure that steam doesn't enter the bowl while steaming.
Put some water in the saucepan, and careful lower the bowl in. The water should reach more than half-way up the bowl, but not too high, or it will boil over, or get into the bowl and make the contents soggy. Put the saucepan lid on and put the heat on. When boiling, turn down to minimum, to .
For long time boiling like this, there is always the risk that the steam may escape the lid and so the pan can boil dry. Check it from time to time, and top up with more water if necessary. Some people say "Add boiling water", but there's no need - the new water soon gets hot.
When it's cooked, run a knife round the sides of the bowl to loosen the pudding (the bottom is soft because of the jam). Put a plate over the top of the bowl. Holding bowl and plate together, turn them both upside down and put on the table, and watch it, hopefully. The pudding should drop onto the plate. If not, then turn it back, and try more cutting with the knife. You can serve it from the bowl that you steamed it in, of course.
Steamed puddings are always served hot, with .

Some of the following ingredients are possible variations.

There are many variants of steamed pudding. I used lemon curd rather than jam in the photo above. Treacle pudding uses in the same way. Spotted Dick mixes raisins into the pudding mix instead (those raisins again!) Chocolate pudding has cocoa powder mixed into the mix, and is served with chocolate sauce (which tends to be ordinary mixed with cocoa powder!)
Butter is perhaps rather extravagent for a traditional pudding. They used to use suet (a sort of beef fat). This works, but it can make a heavy pudding. Another traditional fat was lard. It would be OK to use margarine.
Adding spice to steamed puddings is definitely not traditional, but I think it improves them. You can play games with the flavours. A teaspoon of ginger added to a treacle pudding is good. Cinnamon or nutmeg can add an extra something. Steamed puddings can be rather stodgy, so this can help to perk up the taste a little.