Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake

Name: Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake
Prep time: 120 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 160 min
Yield: 12
Ingredients: 10 oz pitted medjool dates (chopped (about 18 whole dates)); 1 3/4 cup water; 3/4 tsp baking soda; 2 cups all-purpose flour; 2 tsp baking powder; 1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temperature); 1 1/4 cup dark brown sugar (packed, I used demerara); 2 large eggs (room temperature); 4 Tbsp fancy molasses; 2 tsp vanilla; 1/2 cup heavy cream; 1/2 cup unsalted butter; 1/2 cup dark brown sugar (packed, I used demerara); 1 Tbsp fancy molasses; 2 tsp vanilla; 4 large egg whites; 1 cup granulated sugar; 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter (room temperature); 1 tsp vanilla

November 12, 2017 by Olivia 71 Comments

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This Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake transforms the classic British dessert into a delicious layer cake! Date infused cake layers, vanilla buttercream, and a decadent toffee sauce.

I am an excellent planner when it comes to almost everything in life… except for (apparently) baking. With baking, I am the worst. The WORST. I don’t understand it. I have a background in project management, and when planning trips or anything else in life I am SO on top of it.

When it comes to baking… I just don’t know what happens. It’s like I can’t commit to an idea or something. I’m constantly changing my mind and forgetting things, and it just makes for a huge waste of time. I can’t make a decision to save my life. Case in point: this Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake.

It all started with my lack of a plan on how to attack this cake. I had a recipe in mind (modified from Rock Recipes) but I didn’t know how I wanted to incorporate the toffee sauce or how to decorate it. Oh well, I knew I could get the cake layers baked up and out of the way, and worry about the rest at a later date (hah!).

I had the foresight to buy the medjool dates, as I knew I’d be making this cake, but I didn’t think to check my stock of other stuff. So there I am, getting out all my trusty ingredients, only to realize that my molasses had expired. *&%$. Off to the store I go (it’s a 20min round trip at best, usually longer).

So I go get what I need, get home, and start prepping everything. Somewhere in those few minutes, I realize that I want to drizzle the toffee sauce over the cake layers while they’re still hot out of the oven. Do you think I’d have had the foresight to buy heavy cream for the toffee sauce while I was at the grocery store? NooOOOoooo. Why would I do that? That would be smart and efficient and organized. Clearly I am none of those things.

So, off I go to the store. Again.

Finally back home, I start whipping up the cake batter. It all goes smoothly except I have way too much batter for my 2″ tall pans. UGH. Thankfully I realized this and did not overfill my pans. They didn’t spill over, but I did have some excess. I’ve since modified the recipe, as I had to remake the entire cake anyhow (read on).

Once the cakes were out of the oven and out of their pans, I poked them all over with a bamboo skewer and slathered the hot toffee sauce onto them. I cooled them completely, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and stuck them in the freezer, since I wouldn’t be finishing the cake until the following week.

I actually freeze almost all of my cake layers before using them. I try to spread out my baking as much as possible and do stuff in batches, so I’ll often have a variety of frozen cake layers ready to go in the freezer. Freezing the cakes works perfectly, whereas putting them in the refrigerator dries them out. Just be sure to double wrap them in plastic wrap before freezing.

So, fast forward to the following week — aka, decorating and photos. I could not, for the life of me, decide how I wanted to decorate this cake. I need to be better about planning this stuff up front, because winging it on the day really isn’t working for me. No joke that I spent 4 hours decorating and re-decorating this cake. It’s ridiculous.

I did 4 versions one day, hated them all, and just stuck the cake into the fridge in order to try version 5 the next day.

Here are some crappy pics of the crappy 4 initial versions.

Before attempting version 5, I made more toffee sauce, since I had run out from all of the previous failed decorating attempts.

So, the next day comes along and it’s another disaster. Maybe this cake was not meant to be. Something was off in my toffee sauce — it was WAY too thin, and no amount of fridge/freezer time was thickening it. I was so over this cake by this point, so I just went with it and took pics, hating the cake through and through the entire time. Here’s a shot of version 5, which was just as disappointing as the initial 4.

Unfortunately (for me) the pics just did not turn out. Maybe it was self-sabotage because I hated the cake anyhow, I don’t know. All the pics were dull and blurry. I thought I could edit them to be ok, but it wasn’t working.

After a good week of mulling it over, I decided to redo the cake entirely. I tweaked the recipe a bit too, since the first one made a bit too much batter. The layers baked up much prettier in the second version.

I think my biggest struggle with this whole Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake, and what ultimately caused all the issues, was deciding on the approach to take with the frosting.

Frosting isn’t traditional in sticky toffee pudding. It’s cake and toffee syrup, sometimes with ice cream or whipped cream on the side. So I didn’t want this cake to be frosting heavy, but I also didn’t want it to look too much like my Caramel Apple Cake. It needed the toffee drizzle though, since that’s a main component of sticky toffee pudding! Ugh. Finally, I settled on a semi-naked cake with toffee drizzle. It is what it is, and really all that matters in the end is how it tastes, right?

So, version 6 (the final version) of this cake was better and good enough. I don’t love that it looks so much like my Caramel Apple Cake and that it’s another drip cake, but I think this style just worked best for this Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake.

What is Sticky Toffee Pudding?

Well, I’ve rambled (ranted) on for an eternity, and we haven’t even talked about what Sticky Toffee Pudding is! If you’ve never tried it before, then trust me that you need it in your life, because it is SO delicious!

Sticky Toffee Pudding is a British dessert consisting of a cake made with dates and drizzled with toffee sauce. When I first saw it on the menu at a restaurant I thought it was going to be a bread pudding-type dish. It’s NOT. I am not a bread pudding fan. Soggy bread is one of the grossest things to me. I just can’t deal with the texture. As such, I avoided sticky toffee pudding for a good chunk of my life and totally missed out!!

I think this Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake does the original justice. My taste testers have loved it, and I’ve had at least one British friend say it was amazing. That’s all the validation I need, and it certainly makes the struggles with this cake worthwhile.

If you are a Sticky Toffee Pudding fan, I hope you will love this cake as much as I do!

Tips for this Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake:

I used a generous amount of toffee sauce on the layers, so the cake is extra moist. You can use as much or as little as you want.
This cake can be baked in two 8″ round pans instead, with no adjustments to the recipe.
The baking soda helps to soften the dates so they are easier to mash.
If you make your toffee sauce in advance and refrigerate it (I did), you’ll need to warm it up again the next day as it might separate a bit. Be sure to let it cool and thicken before drizzling on the top of the cake.
If you like this Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake, be sure to check out my other festive cakes! Eggnog Cake, Gingerbread Cake, Pecan Pie Cake, Ferrero Rocher Cake.
Be sure to check my Swiss Meringue Buttercream post for tips and troubleshooting.
To help ensure your cake layers bake up nice and flat, see my Flat Top Cakes post.

5 from 15 votes