Mum's Traditional Sticky Toffee Pudding

My wife adores sticky toffee pudding and will always seek it out on every menu when we dine out. Although delicious, I can often find them too sweet to the point where the dessert can become unpleasant.

So when asked to make this at home, I’ll tend to go to my mother’s classic recipe, which has a hint of lemon that cuts through the sweetness, resulting in a truly scrumptious dessert.

For this recipe, you will need a 1.2L/2 pint pudding basin. Instead of one large pudding, you could split the mixture up and make 8 small individual puddings.

Prep 30 mins

Cook 2 hrs 30 mins

Total 3 hrs

Serves 8

Ingredients

Sauce

225g dark muscovado sugar (use demerara if you can't find it)
100g salted butter
1 tbsp lemon juice
150ml double cream

Pudding

175g stoned dates
75g salted butter
100g caster sugar
3 zests of lemons
2 large eggs
175g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

Start by making the sauce. Combine the sauce ingredients in a saucepan and stir over a low heat until the butter has melted and the sugar has completely dissolved.
While you’re making the sauce, roughly chop the dates and place them into a bowl just covered by boiling water and leave them until cooled.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy before adding the lemon zest. Beat in one egg at a time, thoroughly whisking the mixture.
Now mix in half of the flour and the bicarbonate of soda along with the dates and the water they were soaking in before proceeding to fold in the remainder of the flour.
Butter a 1.2L / 2 pint pudding basin. Pour in about half of the sauce and top with the pudding mixture. Make the surface level before preparing the basin to steam.
Click here to learn how to steam a pudding
Steam the pudding for 2½ hours. After cooking, leave the pudding to stand for 5 minutes before turning it out onto a warm dish. Warm the remaining sauce and pour over the top of the pudding.
Although delicious on its own, this pudding is excellent served with clotted cream or ice cream.