Admittedly this picture is not the most accessible (sorry for making you squint) recipe porn. But sometimes you have to work a little for your gratification.
The recipe, which is for Lemon Surprise Pudding if your eyesight is really that crappy, comes from Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham's Roast Chicken and Other Stories.
Hopkinson is an industry favourite, and Lindsey Bareham shares really good recipes most days in The Times (see dreamy comfort-food-yet-almost-healthy crab egg-fried rice here).
I also have a soft spot for Bareham because her A Wolf in the Kitchen: Easy Food for Hungry People was the third cookery book I ever owned (the first was a Jane Asher book for kids, the second Larousse Gastronomique, a food encyclopedia) and helped me eat my way through university.
Anyway, this Lemon Surprise recipe came to my attention yesterday, when I was trying to persuade my eight-year-old nephew Olly to eat the Petit Filous yoghurt his mum had given him for dessert.
He didn't like these nasty little yoghurts, and wasn't going to swallow it without a struggle. I tried to bribe him by saying I'd make him his favourite pudding next time he was at mine if he ate this without a fuss.
He had a long think about what that might be. He might be young, but he understands how to benefit from devious bribes and deals.
That said, if an eight-year-old chooses a proper pudding over a Rice Krispie Square as his favourite dessert, it has to be a winner.
If you've already read the recipe, you'll know that the surprise is a bright yellow layer of lemon sauce which settles just below the pudding's spongy crust. So you get two puddings for the price of one, and it is possibly the easiest thing to make ever - you just cream butter with lemon rind and sugar, beat in egg yolks, stir in flour and milk, fold in stiff egg whites and the juice of a lemon and whack in the oven for 45 minutes.
Despite its simplicity, I didn't ask his mum to whip one up there and then. My eldest sister is a harassed mother of two with a full time job. Do you remember the mad-as-a-box-of-frogs mum character in Green Wing whose handbag was full of mouldy old nappies and crafty rubbish? That's my sister that is.
So I had offered to make the family Sunday lunch this weekend. She rebuffed the offer, and wouldn't even let me bring along the delicious cherry clafoutis I had planned -
I knew there had to be a point to my Sunday, apart from a lie in, a mild hangover and a relaxed trawl through the papers (NB: turns out it wasn't OFM week after all, so fears on hold for another week or two).
There had to be someone out there who wanted to eat my food. Someone who would grin with every mouthful and make me explain where I found the right type of cherries, how I got the batter soft on the inside and nicely browned on top. And would I mind awfully sharing the story of where I first ate a clafoutis?
Apparently today wasn't the day for this.
My sister spent most of the afternoon on the phone whilst making
a fish pie
houmous
pizza
carrot and jerusalem artichoke soup
a ham hock and bean casserole
a mincemeat in filo pastry slice for our dessert (er, why would you eat this when Yuletide is clearly long past?)
But she couldn't spare the one dish for poor little cookery-starved me to make.
Instead I knocked back the bottle of cheap red I had brought over, scared there would be nothing to drink as she has given up for Lent, and plotted my revenge...
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