Sticky Toffee Pudding

Sticky toffee pudding has got to be one of the finest puddings known to humankind. Dark, chewy cake, drenched in sticky toffee sauce and lightened with a splash of cream, it's a pudding that has no qualms about it's 'unhealthiness' and as such rewards you with a bowl of pure joy.

Now you may think that it is as British as it comes, but the original recipe can be traced to Canada who gave it to a chef from Lancashire called Patrica Martin. A chef from my home county of Cumbria then got hold of the recipe and stuck it firmly on the map by serving it at the Sharrow Bay Hotel. Nowadays the unofficial home of the sticky toffee pudding is Cartmel, where the little village shop makes 2000 of the little beauties every week.

It is essentially a fail safe dessert, it's very rare that somebody around the table will not like it and if they don't like it then there is more for everybody else, win-win in my book. It has made its way on to my Christmas Dinner table and more recently on to the tweet up table of @ewanmitchell who invited a few of us round for a meal, of which I was placed in charge of the pudding.

The recipe I used  is a Nigel Slater recipe but it is relatively unchanged from the classic recipe.

Sticky Toffee Pudding
Ingredients
60g Butter
60g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
150g self raising flour
150g dates, stoned and chopped.
250ml hot water
1tsp bicarb.


Method
Cake
Line a 900g loaf tin and preheat the oven to 170C
Place the prepared dates into a bowl and pour of the bicarb and hot water, leave for ten minutes.
Beat the sugar and butter together until fluffy then beat in the eggs, one at a time, until fully combined.
Fold in the flour until combined.bat in the date mixture, the mixture will be very runny.
Pour into the loaf tin and bake for about 40 minutes, a skewer should remove clean when cooked.

Sauce
Place the butter and sugar into a pan and melt together, stirring continuously.
Once combined, pour in the cream and simmer very gently for 5 minutes.

Pour into a serving jug and serve with cream alongside cut up portions of the cake.

Enjoy.

I am submitting this for this months Tea Time Treats Challenge by Karen and Kate of which the theme is eggs. This month the challenge is guest hosted by Jane over at her lovely blog.