This is Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for Sticky Toffee Pudding from his Cooking For Friends cookbook. He brings up this dish a lot on his TV shows, and since I love him, I decided to try this dish for Christmas instead of a plum pudding. The dessert turned out despite the fact that I had the wrong kind of dish (I used a sponge cake baking dish), I replaced a lot of ingredients and was working without a food scale. I’ve converted his measurements, but ideally a food scale should be used. The pudding was nice and light with just a hint of chocolate, though wasn’t quite sticky enough because I was unable to serve right away. All in all – still a hit.
The Recipe:
I can’t resist a good sticky toffee pudding. For me, this is the perfect ending to a meal on a cold, wintry day. It pays to use medjool dates here, as their toffee-like flavour adds depth to the pudding.
Serves 6
Pudding:
200g (1 cup) medjool dates, pitted and chopped (I used plain old cheap dates)
175g (3/4 cup) dark muscovado sugar ((I used brown sugar)
250ml (1 cup) water
100g (1/2 cup) lightly salted butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp cooled espresso or strong coffee (I used strong coffee!)
3 large eggs
150g (1 ¼)plain flour
50g cocoa pwder
1 tsp bicarbonate (baking) of soda
1 tsp baking powder
pouring cream, to serve
Toffee sauce:
100g (1/2 cup) dark muscovado sugar
75 g (1/3 cup) lightly salted butter
250ml (1 cup) double cream
Preheat the oven to 190 C/Gas 5. Butter, line and butter again 8 175ml-200ml pudding basins. (Or use a 1-litre basin to make one large pudding.)
Put the dates, sugar and water in a saucepan and simmer gently for 10 minutes until the sugar has dissolved and the dates are soft.
Leave to cool, then blend in a food processor until smooth. Add the butter, vanilla, espresso and eggs and whiz again until well blended.
Scrape the mixture into a large mixing bowl. In 2 batches, sift the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder over the bowl and fold in the wet mixture.
Divide among the prepared basins and bake for 20-25 minutes (or 50-60 minutes if using a large basin). The puddings are ready when a skewer emerges fairly clean when inserted in the centre.
Put all the sauce ingredients into a saucepan and simmer, stirring frequently, until the butter and sugar have dissolved and the sauce is smooth. It should only take 2-3 minutes. Keep warm and give it a stir every once in a while to prevent a skin from forming on top.
When the puddings are just cool enough to handle, but still warm, run a small knife along the sides, then invert on to individual serving bowls. Peel off the baking parchment. Pour a generous drizzle of warm toffee sauce over the puddings and serve immediately, with a jug of pouring cream to hand around.
On a cold winter night, curl up with this pudding and watch a Kitchen Nightmares marathon – fuck the calories!
I SEE HUNGRY PEOPLE 