Sticky toffee pudding | featuring dates | Kukskitchen

Recently something happened in my dear friends' life which left her with sad but fond memories of sticky toffee pudding. I would like to dedicate this post to her and her memories.


Sticky toffee pudding is a British steamed dessert consisting of a very moist sponge cake, made with finely chopped dates or prunes, covered in a toffee sauce and often served with a vanilla custard or vanilla ice-cream. It is considered a modern British ‘classic’, alongside Jam Roly-Poly and Spotted Dick puddings. (wikipedia)


This recipe is based on a Marco Pierre White recipe from his Mirabelle restaurant book. It calls for baking and not steaming and still produces a moist soft base ready to soak all that toffee sauce. Yum!



Before you start:

- Make the sauce in advance and store refrigerated. Heat it up before serving.

Try it and let me know how it turned out. :)

Ingredients:

150g of Dates, pitted
150ml of water
1 teaspoon of Bicarbonate of Soda
60g of softened unsalted butter
150 g of Dark Muscavado Sugar
2 eggs
180g flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder

For the sauce:

200 g of caster sugar
200g of unsalted butter
juice of 1/2 lemon
200 ml of cream

Method:

• Pit and chop the dates. Put them in a bowl, cover them with the water and sprinkle over them the teaspoon of Bicarbonate of Soda. Let the mixture soak and soften for at least 1/2 hour.
• Put the date and water mixture in a pan on the stove and heat till boiling point. Cook the mixture for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Let the mixture cool then puree it.
• Preheat the oven at 160 degrees.
• In another bowl mix and cream together the butter and dark muscavado sugar. Add the eggs and date puree and mix. 
• Sieve the flour and baking powder into to the wet mixture.
• If using individual molds, butter and flour 6 of them and fill them 3/4 up with batter. If using a square tin, butter it and using a long piece of wax paper the width of the tin, make it stick on one side of the tin, the bottom of it and the other side in a U shape, then fill it with the batter and smooth the top.
• Place either the separate molds or the square tin in the oven and bake for around 10 to 12 minutes or more till a tester knife comes out clean.

For the sauce:

• In a pan on the stove put the butter and caster sugar, let it melt. Bring to boiling point whisking continuously, the mixture will start to caramelize. Do not stop whisking, the mixture will go from a white gold color to a nutty brown one.
• Take it off the heat and pour in the lemon juice. Do be careful as the whole thing will swish up and splatter. Calm it down by pouring the cream over it, whisking all along.
• Sieve the sauce to remove any possible sugar chucks from it. How to serve: If using the square tin, turn the cake out on a plate that is at least 3 cm deep.
• Prick the top of the cake with a fork and pour the hot sauce all over it, saturating it. If using the individual molds, turn them on individual plates, and spoon over them a generous amount of toffee sauce.

This pudding can be served with cream, but works best with a good quality vanilla ice cream as it is the mixture of hot and cold that one is after.

Cheers
Sherin Deepu