Sticky Toffee Pudding

We had great success with our sticky toffee pudding as a Christmas Day dessert. It’s a hybrid of a recipe by Jamie Oliver, one that we found in a gluten free cookbook, and one for a make-ahead pudding by the hairy bikers.

Ingredients

Pudding

• 200-250g chopped dates
• 200ml boiling water (or tea)
• 100g softened unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• 170g sugar (85g golden caster, 50g light soft brown, 35g dark soft brown)
• 170g self-raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 eggs (room temperature)

Sauce

• 110g unsalted butter
• 110g sugar (half light soft brown sugar, half dark soft brown sugar)
• 140ml double cream

Method

Pudding

1. Soak the chopped dates in the boiling water with the bicarbonate of soda for 30 minutes.
2. Mash the dates with a fork.
3. Cream the butter and sugar.
4. Add the eggs and flour and spices.
5. Mix the dates in to the batter and spoon into a greased baking dish.
6. Cook for 45 minutes at 180˚C. Check with a skewer and if it comes out with batter on, return to the oven for 5-10 minutes.

Sauce

1. Add all the ingredients to a small pan and cook together on a low heat. Stir gently initially.

Notes

1. Make sure you remove the stones from your dates!
2. We did this as a make-ahead for Christmas day. When we made the sauce at the same time as we made the sponge and poured about a third over the top. We let it all cool before storing in the fridge. We reheated for about 20 minutes at 180˚C and microwaved the sauce.
3. It’s very nice (but also incredibly over-indulgent!) served with vanilla ice cream.
4. The reason for using a mixture of sugars is both for the colour (more dark sugar makes for a more appealing toffee sauce) and for the overall toffee/caramel taste of the pudding. You can change the ratios here to suit your own tastes.
5. It’s a fairly lenient recipe so don’t get too hung up on exact quantities.