Facts About Sticky toffee pudding
Sticky toffee pudding is an English dessert consisting of a very moist sponge cake, covered in a toffee sauce and often served with a vanilla custard or vanilla ice-cream. A popular variation using dates, known as a sticky date pudding in Australia and New Zealand, is considered a modern take on a British classic by various British experts, alongside bread and butter pudding, jam roly-poly and spotted dick puddings.
Origins
Francis Coulson and Robert Lee developed and served sticky toffee pudding at his Sharrow Bay Country House Hotel in the Lake District, north west England, in the 1970s. Food critic Simon Hopkinson claimed that Coulson told him he got the recipe from a Patricia Martin of Claughton in Lancashire. Martin had published the recipe in a compilation that later became The Good Food Guide Dinner Party Book, and first served the dish at her country hotel. Coulson's recipe only differs from Martin's in the sauce. Her son later told Hopkinson that she had originally got the recipe from two Canadian air force officers who had lodged at her hotel during the Second World War. According to Hopkinson, this Canadian origin makes sense, as the pudding uses a batter more akin to that of an American muffin, rather than an English sponge.
Ireland