Sticky Toffee Pudding

A few weeks ago I shared my Gingerbread recipe on a linky party and someone asked if I had a Sticky Toffee Pudding recipe.  I didn't, so I had to go looking for one.

I looked at a lot of different recipes on a lot of different sites and settled on one from Nigella Lawson, for Easy Sticky Toffee Pudding, where you don't have to make the sauce separately but it all cooks together.  From my searching it seems that there are two key ingredients for a good sticky toffee pudding.  Dark brown sugar and dates.  Now I have plenty of dark brown sugar.  I have a favourite dark brown sugar, in fact I call it my secret weapon in my gingerbread recipe.  A molasses unrefined sugar.

But the dates I wasn't so sure about.  I'm not keen on dates, don't particularly like any of those darker dried fruits, although I am beginning to tolerate them in some recipes so I thought I would give it a go.

For 8 portions

Ingredients

FOR THE CAKE:

100g dark muscovado sugar

175g self-raising flour

125ml full-fat milk

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

50g unsalted butter, melted

200g chopped, rolled dates

FOR THE SAUCE:

200g dark muscovado sugar

Approx. 25g unsalted butter in little blobs

500ml boiling water

Preheat the oven to 190°C/gas mark 5 (375f for my American friends) and butter a 1 ½ litre capacity pudding dish.  I forgot to butter the dish.  I don't know if that had an effect on how the dish turned out, let's carry on and see.

 Weigh out your first 100g of the sugar

This particular sugar does have a tendency to harden when stored for a while , if yours is the same you might want to crumble it up between your fingers.

Add the self raising flour and mix together.

Measure out your milk, beat 1 egg into it and add the vanilla extract.  

Melt the first 50g of butter and add that to the milk mixture.

Add this milk mixture to the sugar and flour and mix with a wooden spoon. 

Fold in the Dates

Then scrape into the prepared pudding dish.

Take the 2nd lot of sugar and spread over the top of the pudding.  Take the 2nd lot of butter and in small pieces dot the top of the pudding.

Now take 500ml of boiling water.  YES, boiling water.  And pour it all over the pudding.  

Transfer that to the oven and bake for 45 minutes.  You may need 5 to 10 minutes longer.  The top of the pudding should be springy and spongy when it is cooked.  

I gave mine an extra 10 minutes, because I couldn't see how the top was because not all the sauce had sunk to the bottom.  In hindsight I think it would have been ready at the 45 minute mark.

Now this is what it is supposed to look like according to the Nigella website:

You can see there is virtually no sauce pooling on the top of hers at all.  Hmmmmm . . . . . 

Let's get a portion out and see . . . .

Well, it looks good, it is cooked through, and yummy and gooey.  For me, there are too many dates in it, but like I said, I don't usually like them.  I think if I served it with some cream or ice cream as Nigella suggests, I would eat more of it, but I did finish that small portion.  Got son to try it when he got home and he too thinks there are too many dates in, wishes I would make it without them though.

This is not the first time a recipe has ended up not quite looking the way it should.  Check out how I ended up making Lemon Surprise Dessert.

If you're after a more summery dessert, check out my other Nigella recipe, Pomegranate Ice Cream.

Hmmm, seems I am rather fond of desserts doesn't it?
Would anyone be interested in a series of traditional English puddings?  Any particular requests?