I’ve now made a second dessert from James Martin’s recipe book. This time sticky toffee pudding. It felt like like it was just the right thing for a cozy Saturday night in with my friend.

I thought it might be nice if we made this together. She made the puréed date mixture and I did the rest. I decided that I didn’t want to eat it with toffee sauce, that would be beyond my ‘sweetness limits’ but opted for some cold crème fraiche to accompany this.

The end result was very pudding like! And quite mooriesh too. I kept going back for more.

Ingredients

For the pudding

• 75g soft butter
• 175g dark brown demerara sugar (I used coconut sugar)
• 200g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1 tbsp golden syrup
• 2 tbsp black treacle
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 200g pitted dried dates
1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200oC/400oF/Gas mark 6. Grease a 23cm tin thoroughly with 25g of the butter, then dust the inside of the tin with flour.

Using a food mixer, blend the remaining butter and sugar together. Slowly add the golden syrup, treacle, eggs and vanilla extract to the butter mixture and continue mixing. Turn the mixer down to a slow speed and then add the flour. Once all the ingredients are combined, turn off the mixer.

Place the dates in a saucepan with 300ml water and bring to the boil. Purée the water and date mixture and add the bicarbonate of soda. While it is still hot, quickly add this mixture to the egg mix. Once the mix is combined, pour into the prepared tin and bake for 40–45 minutes until the top is just firm to the touch.

Remove the pudding from the oven and allow to cool, then turn out of the tin and cut into squares.

Reference: ‘Desserts’ James Martin, page 62