Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

Please note, we are only able to answer questions selected for publication and aren't able to enter into personal correspondence.

• Little Lemon Puddings

  I made the individual Little Lemon Puddings and the sauce and top part of the pudding stuck in the tin, but was still delicious when scraped out. Should I try a water bath next time? 

  Posted by stellab. Answered on 17th Feb 2013 at 12.00

  From the nigella team:

  It sounds to us as if you may have used the small metal pudding basins (found mainly in the UK) to make the puddings. Unfortunately when we tested the puddings in these the pudding did stick a ittle. This is because metal heats up far more quickly than china, and will tend to cause the bottom of the puddings to cook too quickly. Using ramekins and a heavy baking sheet helped to avoid this problem. If you don't have a heavy baking sheet then use two baking sheets, one on top of the other.

  If you only have the metal pudding basins then you could try lining the bases with circles of baking parchment to reduce sticking, using doubled-up baking sheets and trying to chill the metal basins as much as possible before the cake batter is dropped into them. You could try using a water bath, though the puddings will take a long time to cook and as the heat of the oven acts with the baking powder to make the sponge part rise, you may find that a gentler heat will lead to puddings with a closer, stodgier texture.

  Add Bookmark facebook twitter Print share