Sticky Toffee Pudding

Sticky toffee pudding is a dense date sponge baked and soaked in warm toffee sauce until it turns almost too soft to hold its shape. It is Britain's richest, most reliably ordered dessert, and the sauce it's drenched in is doing at least as much work as the sponge itself.

What it really is

Dates simmer down and blend into the sponge batter, breaking down enough to add deep sweetness and moisture without leaving recognisable pieces of fruit through the crumb. Baked until just set, the sponge is still warm when a butter-and-sugar toffee sauce, made separately and kept hot, is poured over it and left to soak in rather than just coat the surface — the sponge keeps absorbing the sauce right up until it reaches the table.

The sauce has to be poured on warm and left to soak, not just drizzled at serving. A sticky toffee pudding assembled at the last second, sauce merely spooned over a cold sponge, misses the point entirely; the soaking-in is what makes the dessert live up to its name.

How it is served

• Warm, sauce fully soaked in, often with a fresh pour of extra sauce at the table.
• With vanilla ice cream or custard alongside.
• As a dessert, almost never anywhere else on the menu.

How to write it on the menu

• Flag the wheat, egg and dairy.
• It is naturally vegetarian; note if a version made without egg is available for guests who ask.
• Say if extra sauce is poured at the table, since that finishing touch is part of what regulars expect.