Toffee Apple Pudding

Continuing the series of Traditional Pudding Recipes, today we have Toffee Apple Pudding and a warning for you.
ALWAYS CHECK the temperature you have put your oven on at!  I put mine up to 200c every time I switch it on, to get it warmed up.  This recipe cooks at 190c and I forgot to turn it down when I put the pudding in the oven.  Ooops!
After baking the Sticky Toffee Pudding a few weeks ago, I was not pleased with the date flavour as they are not something I particularly enjoy, and asked friends on facebook how they would improve it.  Someone suggested apples instead and this recipe was born.
You will need dark brown sugar for this recipe.  I have a favourite dark brown sugar, in fact I call it my secret weapon in my gingerbread recipe.  A molasses unrefined sugar.  HOWEVER, if you read my tasting notes at the end you will see that I suggest you don't use this unless you like a really treacly taste to your toffee sauce, and go instead for a standard dark brown sugar.  Or if you don't like it treacly at all, go for a light brown sugar, I am sure it would still work.

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

150g dried apples, cut into pieces

FOR THE SAUCE:

200g dark muscovado sugar

Approx. 25g unsalted butter in little blobs

400ml boiling water  (I used 500ml which was the amount in the sticky toffee pudding but I forgot I had added moisture to the pudding in soaking the apples.  I suggest you use the lower amount of 400ml)

Preheat the oven to 190°C/gas mark 5 (375f for my American friends) and butter a 1 ½ litre capacity pudding dish.  This time I did remember to butter the dish but I really don't think it made the slightest difference to how the pudding turned out or came out of the dish.  Use your sense on this one, you know your pans and baking dishes, you know whether you can get away with not buttering the dish.

 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.  

I use the cap of the bottle to measure my vanilla as I know that these caps happen to hold 1/4 tsp.

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

In the sticky toffee pudding you add the dates AFTER you have added the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients, but the dates were rolled in sugar.  The apples have no coating and have now been soaked.  You don't want them to sink to the bottom of the pudding, so add the apples to the dry ingredients first, mix those in, then add the liquid ingredients and stir until mixed together.

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.  With the sauce having formed in the bottom of the baking dish.

REMEMBER your oven should be on at 190°C/gas mark 5 (375f for my American friends) not any higher like I did.  Then your pudding might not burn a bit like mine did.

Although you can see that the most burnt sections are where the apples were sticking through the top and it is the edges of the apples pieces that burnt.  Maybe covering it with foil for part of the cooking would help.

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

Well, other than being a bit burnt it looks good!  It tastes good too, better for me than the sticky toffee pudding, although a bit too treacly still.  Next time I would use ordinary dark brown sugar rather than that molasses stuff.  The molasses sugar is excellent in Gingerbread and really MAKES that recipe, but not quite right here.

You could serve it with custard, cream, ice cream or just as it is.  Eldest son is home from university and he just had a piece for breakfast and says it was really good.

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, why not check out Nigella's Pomegranate Ice Cream.

So far in the Traditional Puddings recipes I have done

1. Gingerbread
2. Eve's Pudding
3. Sticky Toffee Pudding
4. Jam Roly Poly

Before you go, why not check out my recipes index page where you will find savoury recipes as well as these puddings, or my craft projects index page, I am sure you will find something there to interest you.