Sticky Toffee Pudding
Date sponge drowned in hot toffee sauce, the British classic.
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Before You Start
Sticky toffee pudding is a date cake wearing a sauce it cannot escape. The dates are not optional or detectable: blitzed with boiling water and baking soda they dissolve into a dark, caramel-adjacent sponge that stays impossibly moist. Half the sauce goes on hot from the oven so it soaks in, half at the table for drama.
Instructions
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1
Pour the boiling water over the dates and baking soda and leave 10 minutes. The soda breaks the dates down and darkens the sponge. Blitz or mash to a rough purée.
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2
Heat the oven to 180°C / 350°F. Grease and line a 20 cm square tin.
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3
Beat the butter and brown sugar until creamy, then the eggs one at a time. The mix may look split, and the dates fix it.
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4
Fold in the date purée, then the flour, baking powder and salt. Pour into the tin.
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5
Bake 30 to 35 minutes until springy and a skewer comes out clean. Meanwhile simmer all the sauce ingredients together for 3 minutes, stirring.
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6
Stab the hot pudding all over with a skewer and pour half the hot sauce over to soak in. Serve squares warm, flooded with the rest of the sauce and cold cream or vanilla ice cream.
💡 Baker's tips
- Medjool dates if you can, any soft dates if not. Hard baking dates need 5 extra minutes of soaking.
- The stab-and-soak while hot is the sticky in sticky toffee. Skip it and you have date cake with sauce on the side, a lesser dish.
🔀 Make it your own
- A tablespoon of black treacle in the sponge deepens it further.
- Bake in a muffin tin for individual puddings, 18 to 20 minutes, soaking each the same way.
📦 Storing & freezing
Covered at room temperature for 2 days or fridge for 4, and it reheats magnificently: 20 seconds in the microwave per square with extra sauce. Both pudding and sauce freeze for 2 months.
❓ Frequently asked
Can you taste the dates in sticky toffee pudding?
Not as dates. Soaked with baking soda and blitzed, they dissolve into a dark toffee-ish sweetness that reads as caramel. Date sceptics eat seconds of this constantly.
Why add baking soda to the date soak?
The alkali softens the date skins so they melt into the crumb, and it darkens the sponge to its classic colour. It is doing chemistry, not leavening, in that bowl.
Baking in a different unit? Use the cups ↔ grams converter or the recipe scaler to halve or double this recipe.
