A Happy Ending to Every Meal

Sticky Toffee Pudding

The annoying thing about being a food writer, is the constant requirement of evolution. I have to be taking down ideas whenever I see or eat a delicious dish, and add them to my scattered lists of notes that lurk, completely unorganised, in various notepads and iPhone apps. I’m expected to bring something new to parties - a novel dessert or an interesting dip - but I’m not ashamed to say my offering will always be this - what is, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest sticky toffee pudding of all time.

I think the key thing is to soak the dates for a few hours, to turn them into a mush. That way, they contribute to the overall sweet, stickiness of the pudding, but don’t appear as chewy little dots throughout it, which many people don’t like. Doing that also makes the finished pudding so incredibly light. It’s like eating a sweet cloud, soaked in a welcome storm of butterscotch sauce.

We have two weeks left on our marathon pantomime run in Bradford, and so to perk the spirits of our hard-working cast and crew, I’ve made two STPs to take in today. We don’t have an oven, so won’t be able to bake them, but I’ll supply them all with paper bowls so they can microwave a scoopful of pudding, and serve it with lashings of cold double cream.