Читать книгу The British Baking Book - Regula Ysewijn - Страница 45

Sticky toffee cake

Serve slices of cake with clotted cream or custard (see recipe opposite).

You can also cook this as one large cake using a round 8½-inch loose-based

cake tin. You’ll only need half the toffee sauce, so halve the recipe. For a sticky

toffee apple cake, add 1¾ cups (220 g) apple cubes to the batter.

48

For 6–8 people

For the cake

1 lb (450 g) dates or prunes, pitted

¾ cup (170 g) butter, at room

temperature

scant 1 cup (200 g) soft brown sugar

3 eggs

2½ cups (300 g) plain white flour

¹⁄

³

cup (100 g) appelstroop or date syrup

3 Tbsp + 1 tsp (50 g) baking powder

pinch of sea salt

butter, for greasing

flour, for dusting

For the toffee sauce

4 Tbsp (50 g) butter

¾ cup (175 g) soft brown sugar

¾ cup cream with at least

40% fat

1 Tbsp appelstroop or date syrup

pinch of sea salt

For two round 8-inch loose-based cake tins

Put the dates or prunes in a saucepan of boiling water. Simmer for 15 minutes,

then drain and purée.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and prepare the cake tins (see page 21).

Put the butter and brown sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy. Add the eggs, one

at a time, and make sure that each egg is completely incorporated before adding

the next one. Add a teaspoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture

from separating. Add the fruit purée and the appelstroop or date syrup, then add

the remaining flour, the baking powder, and the salt. Mix well.

Divide the batter between the two cake tins and smooth the tops. Tap the tins on

the bench a few times to remove any air bubbles. Bake in the middle of the oven

for 45–50 minutes. A skewer inserted in the center of the cake should come out

clean. Leave in the tins for 5 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.

While the cakes are baking, make the toffee sauce by melting the butter in a

saucepan with the brown sugar, cream, appelstroop or date syrup and salt. Let it

bubble until the sauce gets heavier on your spoon. Set aside to cool slightly.

When the cakes have cooled, cover one cake with half of the toffee sauce and

place the second cake on top. Poke holes in the top cake with a skewer. Pour

the rest of the sauce over the cake.

This sticky toffee cake is based on the sticky toffee pudding that you can find in my book Pride and Pudding. At

one point people started baking the pudding batter as a cake, and so this cake was born. My secret ingredient is

appelstroop, a reduced apple syrup. It is available online, but if you can’t buy it you can replace it with date syrup.