Category: dessertPrice: £1.28 in the UK, about $4 in the US Ingredients: Toffee Sauce (Glucose syrup, sugar, water, invert sugar syrup, butter, modified maize starch, milk proteins, flavourings, gelling agents, emulsifier, preservative, acidity regulator, stabiliser, colours), invert sugar syrup, wheat flour, water, dates, breadcrumbs (wheat flour, water, yeast, wheat gluten, salt, canola oil, soya flour, emulsifiers, acidity regulators, margarine, antioxidant, flavour, colour, preservative), golden syrup, humectant, raising agents, skimmed milk powder, ginger, milk proteins, egg white powder, salt, stabiliser, preservative, flavourings The package for this dessert says, "Slow steamed to perfection, these deliciously rich and moist individual sponge puddings have been prepared using only the finest ingredients." If they really used the "finest" ingredients, would I have looked at the package and thought "Holy crap, that's a lot of ingredients!" I found a recipe online that has 4 ingredients in the pudding and 4 in the sauce. But whatever. If you're American like me, you probably know Sticky Toffee Pudding as the recipe that Daphne was supposed to be teaching Niles to make in the episode of Frasier when she finally figured out that he liked her. Or maybe that's just me. One website claims that sticky toffee pudding "is not just a dessert, it's a phenomenon." I'm not sure about that. It seems to me that it is pretty much cake with dates in it (because the British don't know how to make desserts without dried fruit) and some caramel sauce on the top. Coming out of the microwave it smells quite good. The smell reminds me of carmel apples. With cake. It's a good smell. I'm coming at this dessert a bit skeptically because I hate dates. I know that they're in there and I can see them. So it looks and smells good, but I am not sure about the dates. I tasted the sauce first, and it was fantastic. It was like a really good carmel sauce, but with more of a toffee flavor. I'm not sure where the line between carmel and toffee is. But suffice to say that it is good enough to lick the plate. The pudding itself is another fine example of the wonders of steamed pudding. It is like a lightly spiced cake straight from the oven, but moister. (Is moister a word? Should it be "more moist"? Whatever.) The best part about it was that I didn't taste dates at all. They melted into the cake so that they weren't the little chewy bits I expected. And the lovely sauce covered any date flavor there may have been. The only problem I had with this pudding was that there wasn't more of it. If you'd like to experience the wonders of Sticky Toffee Pudding, you can pick some up from my friends at English Tea Store.
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Alana Muir © 2006