The Best Sticky Toffee Pudding

Never has a cake been so well received by family than this one.  I always get a few moans and groans about how unhealthy my hobby is from family members but on this occasion I simply got praise on how amazing this cake was - people just couldn’t stop from going to get seconds (and thirds!).  This is the cake you oooh and aaah over after tasting rather than seeing.

My family do appreciate my cakes, but can become a little overwhelmed at the frequency with which I provide these high-fat high-sugar goods.  Consequently most have joined the gym or taken up either lifting weights, cycling or doing the hula hoop (the latter my little sister does for almost 2 hours a day which is impressive don’t you think?).  In a certain twisted way, my frequent baking has made my family healthier – or that’s what I like to think anyway!

This has to be the best STP recipe out there – I mean it can’t get more amazing than this.  The cake was very soft and indulgent with a lovely warm toffee taste from the dates.  The sauce was comfortly warming and sweet – only thing I would change next time is to completely omit the black treacle to make the sauce more purely toffee-like (or as my sister puts it, ‘more like Werthers Originals')

I adapted the recipe by adding in a mixture of spelt as well as self-raising flour, adding in about ¼ tsp of cinnamon as well as the mixed spice and using golden granulated instead of golden caster sugar (as I didn’t have any of the latter).  

I also used a completely different sauce recipe, the quantities of which I ‘guesstimated’ based on numerous other toffee sauce recipes.  What I realised immediately was that the sauce which came with this recipe just wouldn’t be enough – and I was right.  Using the quantities I did, the sauce was just enough for this cake (mind you we do dollop quite a large amount on top).

Stick Toffee Pudding (from here)

·         200g dates , stoned and chopped

·         250ml black tea

·         ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

·         85g unsalted butter, softened

·         175g golden granulated sugar

·         2 eggs

·         150g self-raising flour

·         25g spelt flour

·         1 tsp mixed spice

·         ¼ tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180C, prepare a square 8” cake tin.

Boil the dates in the tea for about 4 minutes to soften, then take off the heat and add in the bicarbonate of soda (it will fizz).

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy, then add in the eggs, beating well after each to fully incorporate.

Combine the flours, cinnamon and mixed spice together and add to the butter mixture.  Beat until just combined, then add in the date mixture and fold in well.

Pour into your prepared tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until it passes the skewer test (be your own judge on this – everyone’s oven is different).

Sticky Toffee Sauce

·         200g light muscavado sugar

·         75g butter

·         350ml double cream

·         1 tbsp golden syrup

·         1 tbsp black treacle (optional)

Melt the sugar, butter and about 200ml of the cream in a pan over medium-low heat.

Allow to bubble until all the sugar has melted.  Add in the golden syrup and treacle and simmer for another 2 minutes.

Take off the heat and add in the rest of the cream.  Serve

Sticky Ginger Upside Down Persimmon Cake

I’ve been wanting to make a sticky ginger cake for a while now.  I like the warming effect of ginger in the colder months and always gravitate towards these ingredients in autumn/winter.  I think most people do.  

I scoured my cookbooks for the perfect recipe and settled on this one from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries.  This is my first book by this author and I’m really enjoying his style of writing and cooking.  I adapted the recipe by bumping up the cinnamon (naturally) from ½ a teaspoon to 1 teaspoon, omitting the sultanas and using buttermilk instead of milk.  I also wanted to make this into an upside down cake with persimmons (or sharon fruit as we call it in my family) as I believed the flavours of ginger and the fruit would go well together.   

I really don’t think the fruit added anything to the whole at all.  It just seemed to get lost and become completely irrelevant within the strong sweet taste of this ginger cake.  Or maybe I should have cut the slices a lot thicker so the fruit had more ‘presence’ (nobody noticed the fruit while eating until I actually pointed it out to them!).   

Next time I might try apples and cut them a lot thicker.

The recipe doesn’t use any fresh ginger but instead relies on ground and stem ginger, the latter of which I prefer over fresh ginger.  I feel the candied sweetness of stem ginger is just more appropriate in sweet baked goods.

The smell emanating from the syrup and sugar mixture was heavenly!  

I could seriously bathe in this stuff!  This is the smell you want to come home to after a long day at work or school – so warm, sweet and comforting.

Sticky Ginger Upside Down Persimmon Cake

·         250g self-raising flour

·         2 tsp ground ginger

·         1 tsp cinnamon

·         1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

·         Pinch of salt

·         200g golden syrup

·         2 tbsp syrup from stem ginger jar

·         125g butter

·         2-4 lumps stem ginger, diced finely

·         125g dark muscavado sugar

·         2 large eggs

·         250ml buttermilk

·         1 persimmon, sliced finely (or 2 persimmons and sliced slightly thicker so it gets noticed)

Preheat oven to 180C, prepare a 9” round cake tin by lining and greasing it.  Arrange the persimmon slices at the bottom in a roughly concentric pattern.

Combine the flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a large mixing bowl.

Place the golden syrup, ginger syrup and butter on a medium-low heat to melt.  Add the diced stem ginger and sugar and let it bubble for about 1-2 minutes.

Mix the eggs and buttermilk together.  Remove the butter mix from the heat and pour into the flour mixture.  Stir until thoroughly combined, then add in the egg mixture.  The batter should be a fairly liquid consistency.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 40 minutes (checking after 30 minutes to see if it’s done).  If it passes the skewer test then it is done, otherwise give it another 10 minutes or so.

Next time I will try making this cake with spelt flour or a combination of spelt and plain as I think it will work very well.

Date, Orange and Pumpkin Cake

This was my first attempt at using grated pumpkin in a cake recipe.  Come to think of it, it was my first time at using pumpkin in any recipe!  I have seen many pumpkin recipes on American websites but as far as I can tell it isn’t as popular in the UK. 

I like the look of it.  This large, imposing orange ball.  I didn’t want to attack it with a knife, to ruin its glowing spherical presence.  Then I realised what nonsense I was thinking and chopped it in half. 

I do tend to get stupidly attached to pretty/different/amazing looking things – which is why I’m a hoarder by nature.  Although, I really don’t want to be a hoarder because of the mess it entails and mess makes me upset.  So I hoard for a bit, then have an almighty purge of all belongings which usually end up with sisters and other family members.  These occasions are viewed as ‘events’ and everybody (that matters and is relevant) has to be there to make it a fair dispersal.  I’m not joking.  I really wish I wasn’t a hoarder.

On to the cake.  When I was thinking up this recipe, I knew that I wanted it to incorporate molasses sugar as I’m a little obsessed with it at the moment.  I’d been thinking of including dates into the recipe as I love the toffeeness they impart and this cake was to very much be a warming  autumn/winter cake.   It also had to have cinnamon as that just makes everything better.

Well it was a very big hit with the family, everyone loved it.  The cake itself was reminiscent of a carrot cake, especially with the inclusion of the icing.  I thought that the sugar might not be enough, but the addition of the dates added that extra sweetness so it was perfect.  The cake had a lovely warmth to it (from the cinnamon and dates) which made it perfect to eat on a cold autumn day.  The dates and molasses give a gorgeous toffeeness, the orange had just enough of a contrast (although was a little too subtle for some) and combined with the spices this was the equivalent of consuming a fragrant hug.

One issue I had was incorporating the molasses sugar with the dry ingredients.  Sugar is technically a wet ingredient and molasses sugar is wetter and stickier than most - I found that it began to clump as I was trying to mix it with the flour.  Next time I will add the molasses sugar to the melted butter rather than the dry ingredients.  I might also add in a little more liquid, either from the orange juice or from the date water - I was going to call this 'Sticky Pumpkin Cake' but the cake wasn't sticky enough to warrant the name.  Maybe by adding the extra liquid it will impart the required stickiness to be appropriate for the title.  Or, maybe by halving the sugar quantity and making the rest up with golden syrup it will give it that required gooey stickiness?  Hmmmm.

Anyway, I’m happy with this recipe.  This isn’t the first recipe I have created but it is one of the nicest so far and want it to be the first one I share.  Hope you like it.

Warming Pumpkin Cake (own recipe)

·         300g plain flour

·         200g molasses sugar (or dark muscavado sugar)

·         1 tsp cinnamon

·         2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

·         175g dates, chopped fairly thinly

·         4 eggs, beaten

·         200g butter, melted

·         Zest and juice of 1 orange (about 50ml)

·         500g pumpkin flesh, grated

Preheat oven to 200C, prepare a 10" round cake tin.

Pour about 5 tbsp of boiling water over the dates and leave to soak.

Combine the flour, sugar, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl.

Beat the eggs into the melted (but now slightly cooled) butter, stir in the orange zest and juice, then mix in the dry ingredients until fully incorporated.

Mix in the dates (including the water they have been soaking in) as well as the grated pumpkin and mix well.

Bake for about 1 hour, with the first 20 minutes at 200C, then lowering the oven temperature to 180C for the rest of the bake (although keep checking as, no doubt, your oven is different from mine).  Allow to cool before icing.

Orange Cream Cheese Icing:

·         200g cream cheese

·         100g butter, softened

·         250g icing sugar (about 2 cups)

·         Zest of 1 orange

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy.  Add the icing sugar and beat again.  Add the orange zest and beat until incorporated.  Slather on to cooled cake.  Top with some orange zest if you like.

For Next Time

·         300g plain wholemeal or 150g plain and 150g plain wholemeal flour

·         200g molasses sugar

·         1 tsp cinnamon

·         2tsp bicarbonate of soda

·         175g dates, chopped and covered in 150ml boiling water

·         4 eggs

·         200g butter, melted

·         Zest and juice of 1 orange

·         500g pumpkin flesh, grated

Proceed as before but mix the sugar and melted butter together this time.