Flame-cooked Sticky Toffee Pudding

Sticky toffee pudding is a quintessential British dessert. The people’s pudding. Simultaneously pub grub and a Michelin-star favourite that doesn’t discriminate. It’s sweet, gooey, and devilishly moreish.

The dessert’s origins are just as complex and murky as its lavish toffee sauce, but not as ancient as you might think. The place most associated with it is probably the tiny village of Cartmel in Cumbria, which champions the dessert, branding itself “The Home of Sticky Toffee Pudding,” but the townspeople don’t claim to have invented it. For that, Cumbria-based food writer Tess Baxter points to Francis Coulson of the Lake District’s Sharrow Bay Hotel, who published the supposed original recipe in the 1970s and coined it “icky sticky toffee pudding.”

A whole other claim (from Canada) suggests it was a maple syrup recipe from a pair of Canadian pilots (or a handwritten recipe from a solo aviator) that inspired Mr. Coulson’s sticky toffee sauce..

However it started, there’s no disputing its reputation as an end-of-meal closer worthy of a place in the culinary Hall of Fame. This is a dessert that sends everyone away from the table happy. That’s why we asked our Cornwall-based recipe developer Grant Batty (@grantbatty) to create an easy, delicious version that can be made in an Ooni pizza oven. His is a classic, no-nonsense, low-and-slow approach that’s easy to follow. Due to the low temperature it requires, this is a great way to use your oven as it cools down after a pizza-making session. As per tradition, dates are the featured ingredient, used to moisten and enrich the sponge with flavour without making it dense and heavy. Grant recommends serving the pudding warm, drowning in toffee sauce, and accompanied with a generous dollop of fresh clotted cream.

Watch the accompanying video for Grant’s step-by-step instructions.

Flame-cooked Sticky Toffee Pudding

Note

This recipe is best suited for wood and charcoal cooking. To create the low temperature required to bake the pudding, it’s advised to use a charcoal bed and low flame. If you’re cooking with gas, preheat the oven on the lowest setting, then turn off the gas when you place the pudding inside and use the residual heat to cook it. Be sure to check the temperature first to ensure the oven isn’t too hot. If the temperature drops much below the recommended 320°F (160°C) , return the flame to low and position the dish at the mouth of the oven.