Sticky Toffee Pudding

The inspiration for the famous English sticky toffee pudding comes straight from Harry Potter, one of our girls’ favorite books. I made a fabulous one at a New Year’s party to rave reviews. CC#2 began bugging me recently about a repeat performance. I had it planned for Christmas Eve dinner this year with a rack of Prime Beef Roast. Unfortunately, COVID struck mom and dad right before the girls came home for the holidays. Now almost 20 days later, we are combining multiple celebrations, first and foremost CC#2’s birthday jubilee featuring the same fare. I found this perfect recipe from ChefSteps, written clearly and precisely about each step, that initially I only listed my adaptations and did not write down the recipe. Then, when I made this cake the second time, I could no longer find the recipe—the link above takes you to a video and a revised recipe format. As decadent as this cake is, I tried to make it much less sweet—the original recipe calls for 500g dates plus almost one pound of added sugar! My version retains the perfect sweetness for our taste and turns out so well that we at most of it, instead of sharing with others as originally planned. This is a keeper, girls.

Ingredients

• 500g pitted Deglet Noor dates (sold at Costco), instead of Madjool dates which are a bit more expensive

• 825g water

• 9g baking soda

• 5g vanilla extract

• 210g butter, room temperature

• 90g sugar

• 13g salt

• 4 eggs large, about 225g

• 38g baking powder

• 270g cake flour (bleached), plus more to dust the pan

• Toffee Sauce

  • 175g dark brown sugar (or 150g light brown sugar and 25g of Taiwanese dark brown sugar)

  • 100g heavy whipping cream

  • 50g butter

  • 25g whisky

Instructions:

• Bring dates and water to boil in large sauce pan over hight heat, and allow to boil for 1 minute

• Stir in baking soda, and remove the pan from heat after 15 seconds. The mixture will foam, turn green, and then turn dark

• Blend dates and water with in immersion blender until reaching consistency of apple sauce

• Cool mixture to 120F or keep it hotter to achieve a fudgy gelatinous texture of cake)

• Preheat oven to 350F (not on convection setting as blowing fan will create cracks on cake)

• Combine only butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla in KitchenAid mixing bowl, and using paddle and set to lowest speed, mix ingredients, gradually increasing speed to medium high until mixture becomes thick (don’t be tempted to add eggs at this point—I know from painful mistake)

• Add eggs one at a time, wait until each egg is completely incorporated before adding the next egg, and stop once or twice to scrape down the inside of the bowl. The mixture will be a bit lumpy.

• Mix in the cooled date mixture on medium speed

• Whisk baking powder and cake flour together and with KitchenAid mixer on medium speed, add flour to date mixture 1 serving spoon at a time until batter become airy and gelatinous

• Prepare springform pan as follows: greasing bottom and add a 9-inch parchment paper circle (so circle will stick), divide rectangular parchment paper into two and using them to create a vertical funnel around the sides of the pan (I greased the sides with oil spray so they stick to the sides), and butter and flour the bottom parchment paper (shake out the excess flour)

• Pour batter into prepared springform pan (if not using the extra parchment paper lining to create a funnel, you may not be able to use up all of the batter; the recipe calls for leaving 1/3 room in springform pan)

• Bake on middle rack at 350F for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until internal temperature reaches at least 180F

• Poke 100 holes into top of cake and pour hot toffee sauce over cake

• Let sit at room temperature overnight

• Toffee sauce: Heat brown sugar, 50g butter, and heavy cream in small sauce pan over medium high heat. Once butter and sugar dissolved allow to boil for 30 more seconds. Turn down to low heat, stir in whisky.

Mom’s Tips: The Springform pan from William Sonoma is the best of its kind and key too to ensure that no juices runs away from the cake! Also this is a very precise recipe measured in grams and seconds. I learned that in baking deserts, accuracy is key so don’t try to wing it, CC#1! Also don’t be afraid of the amount of baking soda and baking powder used here. They both make this dessert sing…