The Ultimate Sticky Toffee Pudding
Sticky Toffee Pudding. It’s the ultimate comfort dessert--the kind of thing you want to have an intimate relationship with while you’re curled up by the fire watching Outlander, or better yet, something with Richard Madden. (I love Sam, but apparently he loves to workout . . . ? Is that even natural? It is, at the very least, a buzzkill, especially when you’re eating sticky toffee pudding).
This recipe comes (mostly) from Felicity Cloake of The Guardian*, who is, in my opinion, the angel of British food. For me, an unabashed Anglophile** who has no time to mess about with trying all different recipes in territory I am unfamiliar with, I appreciate when someone does all the work for me.
She picks quintessentially British food, tries 5-10 recipes that may or may not claim to be the perfect version of said food, and then comes up with her own, ultimate version. Then, because she explains all of her thinking behind each of her choices in her recipe, it gives me the tools I need to then make the food exactly how I would like it.
This is mostly her recipe, but with a technique I changed so that you don’t get any nuts or pieces of dates in the cake (which would also be a buzzkill for me).
Ultimate Sticky Toffee Pudding
For the toffee sauce (which you may want to seriously consider doubling):
1 stick (110 g) butter
⅔ cup heavy cream
⅓ cup light brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
For the cake:
6 ounces Medjool dates, pits and stem things removed
1 teaspoon baking soda
10 ounces (1 ¼ cup) boiling water, plus about 2 cups more for baking
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 cup (firmly packed) light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 ¼ cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
Vanilla ice cream, for serving
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. To make the sauce, combine butter, cream, sugars, and salt in a small saucepan. Whisk over medium heat until butter melts. Turn the heat to medium high and bring to a boil. Allow to boil for 4 minutes, until thickened. Remove from heat and pour about a cup of the toffee sauce into the bottom of an 8-inch broiler safe square pan (I used an 8” non-stick steel pan). Place the pan in level spot in the freezer while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Set aside remaining sauce for later.
Chop dates into ¼” pieces and cover with 10 ounces of boiling water. Stir in baking soda and allow to sit. When the water has cooled some, use a slotted spoon to transfer date pieces to the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Add the vanilla and about a ¼ cup of the date water, and save the rest of the date water for later in the recipe.
Process the dates (adding more date water if necessary) until a smooth paste forms. Add in butter, sugar, and eggs, and process until smooth. Add flour, baking powder, salt, and cloves, and process until just combined. Pour in remaining date water and pulse until just smooth.
Remove pan with the toffee sauce from the freezer and pour in batter. Place on the middle rack in the oven, then pour about 3 cups of boiling water into a separate oven-safe pan and place on the bottom rack of the oven. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the center springs back when touched.
Remove the pan of water, and turn the oven to the broiler setting.
Poke holes with a chopstick all over the cake and pour over remaining toffee sauce (unless you doubled the toffee sauce recipe. In that case, pour over about 1 cup). Place cake back on the center rack of the oven and broil for 1-3 minutes. Watch very carefully and remove as soon as the toffee sauce is bubbling. Remove from oven and allow the cake to cool for about 5 minutes, then turn out onto a serving plate. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, and remaining toffee sauce if you were smart and doubled it.
* The Guardian is still free, so if you have the means, and like what you see there, you might want to pass along a donation to them to keep their channel going.
** By the way, I know that the two beauties I mentioned in the first paragraph are Scottish and not English, but I don’t know the term for someone who is obsessed with all things from the UK . . . or Ireland, for that matter. So from those of us from over here in America, who call themselves Anglophiles, to those of you from anywhere in England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales, we pretty much love all of you.
