Sticky Toffee Puddings
Sticky toffee puddings aren’t pudding at all. They’re CAKE!
The recipe
Yield: 12 cupcake-sized puddings
Time: 2 hours
Ingredients
Puddings:
½ c (70 g) finely chopped dates
1 c (235 g) strong black tea
1 and ⅓ c (165 g) flour
⅔ c (135 g) light brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ c (70 g) roughly chopped dried oranges
1 stick (½ c or 113 g) salted butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
Toffee Sauce:
1 and ½ sticks (¾ c or 170 g) salted butter
1 c (210 g) heavy cream
¾ c (150 g) packed brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
¼ tsp salt
Vanilla ice cream for serving
Instructions
Puddings:
1. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Prep one cupcake pan by greasing and flouring each cup.
2. Pour the hot tea over the chopped dates and let them sit for 15 minutes.
3. While the dates are soaking, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and dried oranges in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix on low speed until combined.
4. Melt the butter in the microwave. It should be very warm to a little hot. Add the butter, eggs, and vanilla and mix on low speed until combined.
5. Add the dates and tea and mix again on low speed until combined. Then turn the speed to medium and mix for two minutes.
6. Scoop the mixture evenly into the 12 cups of the cupcake pan and bake for 26–29 minutes. The tops should not sink when you press them lightly, and a toothpick inserted into one of the middle puddings should come out with a few cooked crumbs clinging to it. While the puddings are baking, make the toffee sauce.
Toffee Sauce:
7. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. It’s fine if your butter is cold from the fridge.
8. Cook the sauce over medium heat until it boils, stirring constantly. Continue to stir while it boils until it begins to thicken, about 5 minutes. Remove it from the heat.
Puddings continued:
9. When the puddings are out of the oven, let them cool for 10 minutes. While they are cooling, gently rewarm the toffee sauce on the stove until it’s hot but not boiling (if needed).
10. Run a knife along the edge of each pudding, then turn them out onto a wire rack.
11. Poke the puddings all over and quite deeply with a toothpick. Remove the toffee sauce from the stove and spoon half of it over the puddings so it soaks in.
12. Serve the puddings while still very warm by topping with the remaining toffee sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
13. Leftover puddings will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for a few days, as will the toffee sauce. To reheat, warm a pudding topped with toffee sauce in the microwave (20ish seconds worked for me) and then top with ice cream.
Notes and tips
Feel free to add any type of dried fruit you like to the batter, as long as the weight/amount is the same. I tried apricots and cherries, and they both worked well.
If you want to go the more traditional route, omit the dried oranges and use 1 cup of chopped dates, soaking all of them in the tea.
The dates should be chopped finely. The oranges should be bigger, about the size of a large chocolate chip.
Brown sugar compresses down quite a bit. If you’re using volume measures, you’ll need to pack it down firmly for accurate measurements.
Proper greasing and flouring your cupcake pans means first coating each cup with a thin layer of shortening, butter, or cooking spray. Then spoon a bit of flour into each one, and, over the sink, tap and rotate the pan so that the flour coats the entire surface of the cups. Then, turn the pan upside down and tap the bottom of it to get any extra flour off. Excess flour will dry out the edges of the puddings.
Make sure your butter is very warm or even a little hot when you add it to the batter. The chill from the eggs could cause it to solidify into tiny chunks if it isn’t warm enough when it goes in.
Before you turn the puddings out, place a layer of parchment paper down on top of your wire rack, especially if it can’t fit in the dishwasher. This will help contain the mess when you drizzle the toffee sauce.
How to turn out puddings in detail: run a knife (ideally a plastic one so you don’t scratch your pan) along the edge of each pudding. Place a layer of parchment paper on top of the pan. Place a wire rack upside down on top of the parchment. Then, using your bare hands or oven mitts (depending on how hot your pan is), hold the rack and pan by the sides and pinch firmly to keep them together. Flip the entire thing over and place on the counter. Tap the bottoms of the cups firmly to dislodge any stuck puddings. If you still have a few sticky ones, gently remove them with the knife.
The story
The way to make sticky toffee puddings is the same method as a traditional butter cake. I don’t prefer butter cakes because even though they have good flavor, the texture isn’t the same moist, light, fluffy one you get from a cake where vegetable oil is the main fat. But I am trying to be an open-minded cake snob, so my first three tries of this recipe were butter cakes.
Butter cakes are not easy! You need to cream the butter and sugar (beating them until they’re really light, airy, and fluffy, which takes 5-10 minutes) then add the eggs one at a time, then alternate dry and wet ingredients, folding gently so your cake isn’t tough, and all the while making sure your batter is a smooth emulsion. My batter curdled slightly all three times (which means the emulsion broke), despite how careful I was to have my ingredients at room temperature. Part of this is my lack of experience with butter cakes (I grew up on oil cakes), and part of it may have been my recipe. I think my liquid ratio was a too high. But despite the batter not being perfectly smooth, the sticky toffee puddings were really good! Served warm and smothered in sauce, they were great, and they definitely were not dry.
Undaunted by my muffin experience (read up on Plum Muffins with Malted Crumbs if you missed my epic fail), my trusty baking instincts wanted to know what it would be like if, for the fourth batch, I melted the butter and treated the batter like an oil cake. I wasn’t so sure. Would they have enough structure? Would the melted butter prevent too much gluten from forming and result in flat puddings? But the baking instincts kept urging me on, so I gave it a try. The actual batter making was so much easier. All I had to do was throw my ingredients in a mixer and let it run for two minutes, no fooling with creaming and worrying about emulsions. The puddings rose well in the oven, an excellent sign. And when I finally tried one… Oh man, was it out of this world good! It was moist, flavorful, and more tender than any previous attempt, and far easier to make. And not only that, but I forgave my baking instincts for the muffin issues because they sure know their way around a cake.
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Made this recipe tonight, and it absolutely blew us away! Best sticky toffee pudding ever