Madhouse recipe : Lyle's Splendidly Sticky Toffee Pudding #StickyButWorthIt

The postie dropped off a lovely parcel from Lyle's earlier in the week, featuring its new "Sticky But Worth It" branding. The tagline is highlighted in their new TV ad, which marks the brand's return to TV screens for the first time in 25 years. If you haven't seen it yet, you can have a look here.

 Lyle’s currently has the world’s oldest unchanged packaging, with the product remaining the same in a 21st century kitchen cupboard as it was in a 19th century larder. The ad brings it bang up to date and into the digital age though. I must admit, I smiled in recognition !

I always manage to get golden syrup everywhere whenever I use it too. I don't go quite as far as licking it off my ipad screen though !

Inside the box, I discovered a trio of Lyle's Golden Syrup products - the traditional tin and two squeezy bottles (which help reduce the mess !) of their Breakfast and Baking variants. The new ad highlights Lyle’s Golden Syrup’s role as that glorious ingredient that makes you and your kitchen sticky, but your food taste delicious, so I headed over to their website for baking inspiration. There were lots of gloriously gooey recipes that appealed to me -  chocolate crispies, cupcakes and flapjacks, to name but a few - but in the end, I opted for Lyle's Splendidly Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Lyle's Splendidly Sticky Toffee Pudding

ingredients :

(Pudding)

175g (6oz) moist stoned dates, roughly chopped

250ml (9floz) water

1 rounded tsp bicarbonate of soda

75g (3oz) unsalted butter, softened

125g (4½oz) Lyle's Golden Syrup

50g (2oz) Tate & Lyle Fairtrade Light Soft Brown Cane Sugar

1 tbsp Lyle's Black Treacle

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs, at room temperature

175g (6oz) self-raising flour

(Toffee sauce)

75g (3oz) unsalted butter

95g (3½oz) Lyle's Golden Syrup

75g (3oz) Tate & Lyle Fairtrade Light Soft Brown Cane Sugar

150ml (5floz) double cream

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C Fan, 350°F, Gas 4. Pop the dates into a pan with the water, bring to the boil then lower the heat and simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the bicarbonate of soda. I had a pack of figs in the cupboard so I used those instead and it worked perfectly so feel free to use whatever you have. I wasn't expecting it to fizz up so much when I added the bicarb, but this is what gives it it's lovely, surprisingly light and airy texture !

Beat the butter, Lyle's Golden Syrup and Light Soft Brown Sugar together.

Mix in the Lyle's Black Treacle until soft and creamy - watch out for more sticky drips !

  Next, beat in the vanilla and eggs. Fold in the flour and the dates with their liquid and mix well to give a soft consistency. 

Spoon into a greased 20-23cm (8-9”) square shallow parchment lined cake tin, and bake on the middle shelf for 30 minutes. Lightly cover with foil and cook for a further 15-20 minutes (until a fine skewer comes out clean when poked through the centre).

Meanwhile, put all the ingredients for the sauce into a medium-sized non-stick pan and stir together over a low heat until the Light Soft Brown Sugar has dissolved.

When the pudding is ready, cut into portions, pour over the warm toffee sauce and serve. Juliette was very impressed with the sauce, squealing "Mum, you've made dulce de leche" !

I loved the beautifully soft, moist and fluffy pudding "nude", without the toffee sauce, which was just as well because Juliette had polished off whatever was left in the pan !

The only thing left was to the clean the kitchen. Definitely #StickyButWorthIt !

Disclosure : I received some Lyle's Golden Syrup.