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Pouding Chômeur (Cake Baked Under Hot Maple Syrup)

Name: Pouding Chômeur (Cake Baked Under Hot Maple Syrup)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Canadian
Ingredients: 150 g plain flour; 2 tsp baking powder; 1 pinch salt; 60 g butter; 100 g sugar; 1 egg; 125 ml milk; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 250 ml maple syrup; 250 ml whipping cream (35% fat); to taste vanilla ice cream

A Quebec dessert: a plain cake batter spread in a dish, a hot syrup of maple syrup and cream poured over it, and the whole thing baked. In the oven the cake rises up through the syrup, and the syrup sinks to the bottom as a thick sauce.

Steps

Heat the oven to 180°C. Butter an ovenproof dish at least 6cm deep, such as a 20cm square, and set it on a tray in case it bubbles over.
Mix the flour, baking powder and salt. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy, then beat in the egg and vanilla.
⏲ 5 min
Add the flour mixture and the milk alternately in two or three goes, mixing only until no flour shows. It is a thick batter. Spread it evenly over the bottom of the dish.
⏲ 3 min
Bring the maple syrup and cream to the boil in a pan and boil for 1 minute.
⏲ 1 min
Pour the hot syrup slowly over the back of a spoon onto the batter. Do not stir. It is fine if the batter looks drowned.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the cake has risen through the syrup and browned and the syrup is bubbling at the edges.
⏲ 40 min
Leave it 15 minutes, then spoon it out with the sauce from the bottom and top with ice cream.
⏲ 15 min

Variations

Brown-sugar syrup. The original syrup was brown sugar dissolved in water rather than maple: 200g brown sugar to 375ml water.
With milk. Milk instead of cream gives a thinner, lighter sauce.
Chocolate. Cocoa powder in the batter.
Raspberries. Scatter fresh raspberries over the batter before the syrup goes on.

Tips

Pour the syrup boiling hot.
Do not stir once it is poured.
A deep dish and a tray under it. The syrup bubbles the whole time it bakes.
Keep the batter thick. A thin one dissolves into the syrup.
Do not serve it straight away. Fifteen minutes lets the sauce settle.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

The oven makes the sauce. According to English and French Wikipedia, the syrup goes on top of the batter, but as it bakes the cake rises up through it and the syrup ends up at the bottom, thicker than it went in. Sticky toffee pudding pours a separately made sauce over a finished sponge, and tarte Tatin bakes its caramel underneath and turns the tart out. Pouding chômeur does neither: the batter swaps top and bottom by itself in the oven.
The unemployed man's pudding. That is what the name means. French Wikipedia says it came out of Montreal's industrial districts in the 1929 Depression, and that the original ingredients were just four: flour, butter, milk and brown sugar. Today the most common syrup is maple with milk or cream. English Wikipedia notes it often appears at sugar-shack meals in the sugaring season but is not specifically a maple dessert.