Can I Prepare The Chocolate Tahini Banana Pudding In Advance?

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Tahani Banana Pudding (from COOK, EAT, REPEAT) is a variation of the Chocolate Tahini Banana Bread. It can be baked as a soft, slightly sticky sponge or for a slightly shorter time to give a more molten pudding cake. It would depend on whether you wanted the gooey version or not. If you want just the soft sponge, perhaps to serve with chocolate sauce, then you could bake the pudding in the morning and reheat portions in a microwave. However, this is not so effective for the molten version.

It is not ideal to make the sponge batter in advance and refrigerate it as tahini tends to become quite solid when chilled, making it difficult to predict how the sponge will bake. Also the bicarbonate of soda will have lost any of its lift if the batter stands for too long. You could certainly try making the batter and refrigerating it, then taking it out of the fridge an hour before baking to let the batter come to room temperature before it goes into the oven. However, we could not guarantee the results. The mixing of the batter is very quick, so instead we would suggest mashing the banana and putting it in a bowl and pressing a piece of food wrap onto the surface to reduce discolouration a little (though any discolouration won't be noticeable anyway in the sponge). Refrigerate this overnight. Have the other ingredients measured out ready. Take the banana out of the fridge about 30 minutes before you need to mix up the batter, then when you are ready to bake, just mix all the ingredients together and scrape the batter into the baking dish and pop in the oven.