Treacle in a Can

James and I live near a great local grocery store called PW. They have a lovely cheese counter, good selection of wine and beer, pretty good breads, nice produce and a fairly impressive imports aisle which houses treats from Great Britain like imported Earl Grey tea, digestive biscuits and treacle-pudding-in-a-can. Now what, you may be wondering, the hell is treacle? It sounds like an inner-ear infection.... James and I sort of wondered the same thing, so we picked up a can of Heinz Treacle Pudding to try, just for kicks. 

Treacle, it turns out, is syrupy sugar-juice . The closest comparison would be to American molasses, except that treacle is much more cloyingly sweet and limp wristed. Now, what came out of the Heinz can was interesting. Because treacle pudding is pudding in the British sense, (meaning a sort of spongy cake), and not the stuff that Jell-O made famous, it needed to be steamed before serving. After a quick 2 minutes covered in the microwave, and we were set to go.

Now, I have to admit that I felt sort of bad sticking a fork into it - it was bright orange and had that same spongy quality that Muppet food has, and Muppet food can talk and burst into song and I really didn't want this treacle pudding to do that. Then I took a bite and I kind of wished it would - at least then it would have been interesting. The sponge cake was admirably spongy but the treacle was SWEET (tm), and that's about all I can say for it.

So, here's what I've taken away from the experience. Even canned, I really like British puddings - I think steamed cakes are tasty, don't ask me why. Treacle-in-a-can however, should be avoided. In fact, perhaps all forms of dessert-in-a-can might should be avoided. That said, I'm curious to know what a homemade treacle dessert would taste like, so I'm mining recipes. So after all of that, I have a new project in the kitchen, which is pretty ok for the price of a can of treacle.