Sticky Toffee Pudding
Mom walking a group of us through the village. Elisabeth is in the green in the back, I may be in the red with my head turned. How cool is Mom’s shirt? Great Missenden, England. 1977.
Decades later, Dad and Mom meet Margaret Thatcher.
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, we lived in England from 1977 to 1978. This began Mom and Dad’s love affair with the country. They often returned for semesters at various universities and spent a big chunk of each year of their retirement abroad. What did they love so much about it? First, being good Episcopalians, they loved the church. Dad wrote a book on the Victorian Anglo-Catholic Revival and there was nary a village church that remained unvisited by my parents. Mom had a big travel atlas and would “X” each town they went to. That book was positively marked up by the end of her life! Mom and Dad were serious Rite I people. I remember them taking me to march on the National Cathedral in Washington DC to “Save the old Prayer Book!” when I was a teenager. (This is EXACTLY what a 14 year old Goth wants to do!)
They loved England’s “pomp and circumstance” and its traditions. I would hear about High Table at Dad’s college and try to imagine what it must be like. (It sounded like a lot of drinking to me, but who am I to judge?!) They loved the country’s tweed. Once when I was visiting, we went to a historic house and Mom flipped out over this older lady’s tweed suit. I told Mom that, between the two of us, I thought we could take her in the parking lot! At some point both Mom and Dad got custom tweed suits to complete their Anglo look. They loved the food. I know you’ve heard the insults, but there really are some delicious British delicacies, Sticky Toffee Pudding among them. At one point, Mom and Dad entertained the idea of writing a Southern Cookbook for English people, under the working title “Grits for Brits” (genius), but it was eventually abandoned due to the limited ability to get ingredients, the metric system, and their enthusiasm for other projects.
When we lived in Buckinghamshire in the 70s, we would load up the car with digestive biscuits and Ribena (an awful tasting blackcurrant drink - kind of the British version of Tang) and take “excursions” every weekend. I dreaded these events, mainly because I got car sick and the driving seemed endless. Funny, because now I live in Texas and will drive 3 hours for lunch with a friend. England is tiny so we must not have been going that far! On one excursion I entertained myself in the backseat by painting my nails with some blood red nail polish I had somehow come across. You can guess how well that went! The polish went all over my dress, a fancy hand-me-down from friends, and everyone was cranky about it. I guess we finished out our day with me looking like Stephen King’s Carrie, but when we got home you can bet that Mom immediately got out the bleach and started to work. With her endless patience, she managed to fix the dress! Armed with the info that Mom had this particular skill, I then moved through life a little less stressed and a lot more sloppy. In college, I remember her using a Q-tip to painstakingly get a coffee stain off a white skirt with black polka dots. Poor Mom.
So, Sticky Toffee Pudding. Mom loved it and it’s something else I could have easily gotten all over my clothes! Much like the Fried Okra post, Mom had several recipes for Sticky Toffee Pudding in her files. That means she was serious about it. I’ll give you an easy one and one that’s more complex.
QUICK STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING
Sauce:
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup soft brown sugar
1/2 cup golden syrup
A few drops of vanilla extract
2/3 cup double cream
For the pudding: Store bought rectangular ginger cake
To serve: Thick cream or vanilla ice cream
Preheat oven to 375.
To make the sauce mix everything except the vanilla extract and the double cream into a small heavy-based saucepan. Leave over a moderate heat until the sugar has dissolved, then turn up the heat slightly and let the mixture quietly bubble for 5 minutes - no longer. Add a few drops of vanilla extract. Pour in the cream and it will froth a little. Give the sauce a good stir and set aside to cool slightly.
Cut the cake into 9 thick slices. Place these in small, deep baking dish and pour the toffee sauce over them. Put in the preheated oven and leave for 15 minutes until the sauce is bubbling and the cake is soggy with the sauce.
Serve hot with the cream or vanilla ice cream.
STICKY TOFFEE BREAD & BUTTER PUDDING
3/4 cup stoned Medjool dates
½ tsp baking soda
1/3 cup butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
6 slices of white bread, crusts removed
6 egg yolks
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways and seeds scraped out
1/3 cup caster sugar (super fine baker’s sugar)
2 cups double cream
For the sauce
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup soft dark brown sugar
1/2 cup double cream
1/2 cup stoned Medjool dates, finely chopped (optional)
splash of brandy
To serve
1/3 cup raspberries
1-2 Tbsp icing sugar
freshly ground black pepper
ginger wine
1/4 cup blueberries
1/4 cup raspberries
1/4 cup strawberries, hulled and quartered
Brown sugar, to glaze
Icing sugar, to dust
Preheat the oven to 325
Place the dates and baking soda in a saucepan and just cover with water. Simmer gently until the dates break down.
Butter the bread, then cut each slice in half to make triangles. Alternately layer the bread and dates in four buttered ramekins, starting and finishing with a layer of bread.
Beat together the whole eggs, yolks, seeds scraped from the vanilla pod and sugar in a bowl. Heat the cream to scalding point, then pour on to the egg mixture, mixing well. Pour over the bread and dates. Leave to soak for at least 20 minutes.
Set the baking dish in a roasting tray filled half-way up the sides with water and bake for 25 minutes or until the custard has set.
To make the sauce, simply combine the butter, syrup and sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil. When smooth and dissolved, remove from the heat and stir in the cream, optional dates and brandy. Keep warm.
Purée the 1/2 cup raspberries, icing sugar, pepper and wine in a food processor to form a coulis. Pass the coulis through a sieve and into a bowl. Roll the blueberries, raspberries and strawberries in the coulis. Preheat the broiler to hot.
Sprinkle the top of the pudding evenly with brown sugar and caramelize under the broiler.
Serve a portion of pudding with the sauce and arrange the fruits and a little coulis around the edge. Dust with icing sugar, to finish.
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