Sticky Toffee Pudding Cakes

Read about how to get a Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake recipe from a fancy restaurant in Vail Colorado (story below).  Original version.  (My changes to make it gooeier in parenthesis)

Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake 

(24 individual portions)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees (Lulu's version 375)
Butter 24 med/lg sized muffins tins

Bring to a Boil in heavy medium sauce-pan.

2 8oz packages chopped dates

2 cups water

Turn down to med-heat continuing a heavy simmer for about 7 additional minutes until mixture becomes a very gooey substance

Then turn off and add to melt:

1/2 stick of butter

Meanwhile combine in mixing bowl:

1lb Flour (Lulu uses 2c.)

2t. baking soda

1t. baking powder

½ t. salt

12oz sugar (Lulu uses 8oz brown sugar)

Pour the cooled date mixture into dried mixture combining and adding:

2 eggs (Lulu uses 3 eggs)

2t. vanilla

Ladle batter into buttered tins 1/2 no more than 2/3's full

Bake approximately 15 minutes covering with parchment paper to keep a spongy-like texture.  (Lulu bakes 9-11 minutes at 375).

Toffee Sauce

Melt into heavy 2quart saucepan

1/2 stick butter

Add and cook on med-high until sugar begins to melt

1lb brown sugar

Add and bring to a boil, remove from heat.

2 cups heavy or whipping cream

Serve the cakes individually in shallow bowls ladling hot sauce over the warm or cooled cakes  with whipped cream on the side.

How to get a Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake Recipe

Every now and then a wild, heaping-good time of sister-hood girl friends, comes together to play and cut-loose in a place as a decadent out-of-town ski village during off-season.  

On arriving that first afternoon they simply decompressed, letting the jagged parts of their lives get picked up by the rolling river outside the rented house.   Their daily schedules wanting to cling to them as naturally as the colorful leaves which eventually fall from the trees outside and decompose.  Someone asked “does the Chinese take-out place deliver?  The wine was uncorked, the cards came out, the entertainment magazines opened and the facial expressions change from it's a regular day to animated, ya baby, I'm on vacation with my girlfriends, thats right!  A few rebellious ones puffed on freshly purchased cigarettes outside on the cool patio. Talking and laughter took over the inside space just as darkness descended on the daylight.   Their active minds wound-down with more and more trivial talk until eventually everything that once seemed so important, now unfastened from their psyches and became trivial and far away.  Later in the dark, sleep penetrated, re-setting them as the cool mountain air wafted through one left-open window.  

The next morning the tousled heads drank coffee and felt hung over. Not from the wine so much as coming down from their daily lives.  Some shuffled through their suitcases, wishing they had brought something like sweatpants.  Then they walked, some alone feeling melancholy and wanting to be alone and last and with nature. Some making their way together, chatting, peripherally aware of the crunch of leaves under foot, the musty smell of autumn and the sound of the river along the path.  The nearby SPA  would soon deliver to them yet another state of being.  

That day they endured painfully, wonderful massages and oily lavender foot rubs.   A few brave ones entirely lost sense of their bodies as they vanished into warm, floating-beds, every inch of skin wrapped in a scented clay like mud.  Manicures and Pedicures were had while they flipped through magazines and sipped fragrant herbal teas.  Quiet talking was heard; then fits of giggles in the lounge, silly talk, “...Bono was my masseuse!” and “that couldn't possibly have been as good as my Frau Helga...”!   A nearby fire licked the air keeping them warm.  They pushed their own heavy-feeling bodies off the silky, lounge beds and stumbled in cotton robes to the delicate lunch delivered with cool champagne and orange juice never having to leave that room.  Later, after all the appointments were exhausted a few courageous ones sweat the remainder of resistant energy out of their bodies, poised in the sauna in a seemingly drug-induced state.  They wandered back to the condo slowly, uncaring and deliriously relaxed.   

Chit chats on the fat sofas then dozing off on cat-naps while the late afternoon sun pours through the windows.   In time, a clever one brews a pot of coffee.  This smell at the nose is far more noticeable then ever before, like a small child whose nose wakes for the first time to the smell of morning brewing coffee.  They begin to transform into new creatures.  Just one cup in this new, current state becomes a jolt of power.  Energized, not just by the coffee but all that has transpired and each other.  In just minutes the pace begins to pick up.  Soon they are decked out and looking their best; make-up tips shared, jewelry exchanged and smelling like flowers or the wind.  They clickity-click outside in their shoes just as a white van-bus pulls up with a happy looking man. What middle-aged shuttle driver during off season, would not be happy to see seven, very relaxed, joyous and beautiful women step on?  The multi-lingual in the group quickly gives instructions to him in Spanish, thus making friends for all.  He senses their “looking for fun” attitude and with his left hand on the wheel, he slides a Disco CD  in with the right.  This funny old music pours out of the speakers and he starts to sing along to “Shake your Booty” looking at them with a smirk in hopeful anticipation that he won't have to turn it down!  They pounce on the bait for fun and join him in singing and then shouting along.  They take advantage of the seating of which both sides face the wide center-aisle.   Someone pulls out a camera and soon it's a crazy disco-dancing ride.  Nearing the destination someone shouts for him to “take the long way”!  This perfect gentleman acquiesces to their desires and drives on with the music turning it up even  louder.  Finally, laughingly they drop big tips in his hand, snapping photos of his beaming face on the way out the door as they head through the village.  

The noisy troupe joyously walks and laughs and dances and maybe skips here and there after the stop for a cocktail. Eventually they land themselves in a fabulous restaurant were they attract a lot of attention immediately.  

They are meticulously cared for through a four-course meal served by an adorable wait staff.  The do freely and verbally play with the wait staff.  They do flatter the chef who visits their table.  They did not break the collectable iittala blown art glass that loomed on the shelf just behind them.  They did attract other dining groups who were sucked into the  high-vibe soon becoming approving participants in their antics.  They did applaud their wait staff.  They did drink a few bottles of  Vino.  They did eat everything on their plates.  And they did, fabulously convince, their kind, humored waitperson to hoist a hot-copy of the best desert they had all equally ever tasted.

--The off season ski town was Vail, Colorado. The House and Spa were at the Vail Cascade.   The restaurant was Sweet Basil in the Village.  Vail lodgings, spas and restaurants offer fabulous  discounts during off season (late spring and fall).  The recipe directions have been simplified but are unchanged otherwise.