The English DESSERT that you IMMEDIATELY need to make!

The internets have been making this for a while, and we're just now coming along for the ride. Today, we're making sticky toffee-style pudding, vegan-style, with a tall, melt-in-your-mouth lush sponge and a rich caramel toffee sauce. Guaranteed, if you break this out in a gathering, no one's going to believe it's vegan. So let's get into what you're going to need. Pitted dates, baking soda, vegan butter, unsweetened vegan yogurt. All-purpose flour, baking powder, brown sugar, canned coconut milk, molasses, vanilla extract, salt, and some spices. Let's start with our prep. Before we get started, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. And don't forget to prep your baking dish. Beginning with our pitted dates. I'm dumping mines out here onto the counter, and you could either pull them apart or cut them just to make sure there's no seeds left behind. I always do this before blending them up in smoothies because I have had one show up once or twice. Date seeds are hard as stone. They literally will jack up your blender. But not only that, the smoothie is, it's unedible because there's like chips of this stone everywhere. Once all your dates are checked, submerge them in boiling water. You're going to let these soak for about 10 to 15 minutes. Dates themselves sometimes can be pretty tough. A good tip to help soften the date and break down the enzymes faster is to add a little bit of baking soda right into the dates with your water, mix it around, and then let that sit for the 10 to 15 minute area. I personally forgot to do it, but definitely do it at home. When your dates are done soaking, you could use either a small blender or an immersion blender to get them broken down to more like a sauce. Just be careful because if you turn the immersion blender on before completely submerging, well, this will happen. And not paying attention, I did this like three times. What you want to do is blend up those dates until smooth and creamy. The mixture will still have little specks in it, but that's okay. As you can see here, the texture is nice, soft, pretty creamy, and this is pretty much date caramel. So you could leave this like this and, you know, have some apples or something with it. But instead of us getting distracted, we're going to set this off to the side. Next up, we're going to work on our sponge. To a large bowl, add softened vegan butter and brown sugar and cream this together. So I want to give like a quick tip or disclaimer on vegan butter. Softened, that does not always mean room temperature. What it means when baking is that when you press on the butter, it should take on an indentation, but ultimately still hold its shape. Vegan butter that's too warm, basically if you press on it, it will collapse completely. Or a good visual reference would be if you're looking at it and the butter looks really shiny or greasy looking, then you know you can't use that. Just re-refrigerate. Once finished, scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure everything gets incorporated. Then add in your unsweetened vegan yogurt and vanilla extract. Mix that until smooth before setting the mixture off to the side. All right. In a separate but also pretty large bowl, you're going to combine your flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. You want to whisk this thoroughly. I usually take about 60 seconds just to make sure everything is together. Now, in this stage, we're going to start incorporating our dry mix into our wet mixing bowl. We're starting out with just about a third of this dry mixture. And what we're going to do is mix that together until it's almost completely gone. And then we're adding in our date caramel sauce. And then we're going to mix that together until it's almost combined again. Once you have that mixed together, we're going to repeat the steps. One third of the dry mixture. The last half of the date mixture. And we'll end with the last third of the dry mixture. Mixing after each time. If you're a beginning baker, I strongly recommend doing this particular step with a spatula. Just folding over and over rather than using an electric mixer. If you over mix, there's no way to really come back from that. Like you can't save this batch anymore. So it's best if you're not completely confident to stir it together. I mean, I even did it with my electric mixer manually. I'll show it on camera. When it's all said and done, you want the batter to be soft, thick, and easily spreadable. Not pourable like a pancake batter. But definitely not as thick as like a brownie batter. So here's a close up so you can take a good look at what you're going for. From here, grab your prepared baking dish. This is an 8x8. So my dish is about three inches in height on the sidewall. Pour your batter into the dish. Then use your spatula to spread it out evenly. From here, we're going to bring this right to the oven. We're going to let this bake for about 35 to 42 minutes. All right. So while that's baking, let's work on this like legendary toffee sauce. All right. In a, I would say like medium sized saucepan. You're going to add in your butter, dark brown sugar, your canned coconut milk. Make sure you shook that really well. Your molasses, your vanilla. Actually, you're not supposed to be adding that in at this moment. So ignore this vanilla you see me pouring in. I'll tell you when you're supposed to add it in. And a pinch of salt. Turn the oven on to medium heat. And you're going to let that go stirring here and there until your butter melts. And then continue to whisk until it's uniform. Then reduce the heat to medium low to maintain a gentle simmer. We're going to let this reduce for about 8 to 12 minutes. We're going to basically let it thicken up slightly. And a good test is if you stick a spoon in there, it should coat the back of the spoon lightly. Once it's finished up, you should have a nice, glossy, rich sauce that will thicken up even more as it cools. Pull your sponge from the oven. And you want that to sit for maybe about 10 minutes undisturbed. That way it can finish setting up. After about 10 minutes, you want to take like a skewer, maybe even a toothpick. In my case, that's a chopstick. And I'm going to poke some holes here on the top. So yeah, you don't need the holes that large. And then again, it's not a bad idea. You know, the sauce goes right in there with no problems. But if you did it correctly, you know, by using a smaller stick, skinnier stick, a thinner stick, a more narrow stick, slowly pour about 3 fourths cup of your warm toffee sauce right over the top. Give it some time. Let it settle into the holes and along the sides. And in just a few minutes, you should be able to pour even more right over top. I personally like to hold on to a little bit more sauce just so I can add some ice cream and drizzle that over top of that too. Once this is all together, give this about 15, maybe 20 minutes, letting everything absorb and set up before slicing into it. So there's a benefit if you let it set up, but there's 1000% a really good benefit too if you don't give it a whole lot of time to set up. So if you go with the not set up side, like you didn't let the cake set up, it's I guess the pudding, you didn't let the pudding set up. Anyway, you get this like authentic molten pudding like texture. I'll, maybe we throw a picture up or something so you can see what I'm talking about. But if you let it set up, it's still amazing after it sets up. It's just firmer, right? You get like a cake that has sauce poured on top of it. I'm thinking like a tres leches, that kind of thing, like that kind of feel. Doesn't taste anything like that though. It tastes really good though. But listen, this is yours, you be the judge. But listen, there you have it. This incredibly moist, rich, decadent, amazing dessert. My kids, my wife, my mom, my best friend, everyone wanted more of this thing. Go treat yourself to this recipe, like right now. The full recipe is linked in the description or you can head right on over to my website, makeitdairyfree.com. Thank you so much for watching. I love this time and I truly appreciate you guys being here. Until next time, believe in good. Peace.