Sticky Toffee Pudding

Heat the oven to 180C/350F.

Butter a 20cm square tin and line the base with baking paper.

Put the chopped dates in a bowl and pour the boiling water over them.

Stir in the bicarbonate of soda and leave the bowl for 15 minutes. The mixture foams and darkens as the bicarbonate breaks the date skins down, and that is where the sponge gets its colour and its texture.

Mash the softened dates roughly with a fork, leaving some pieces whole.

Whisk the flour, baking powder and the 3g of fine salt together in a bowl.

Beat the 80g of softened butter with the 150g of muscovado for the sponge for 3-4 minutes, until the mixture has lightened and looks fluffy rather than grainy.

Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a spoonful of the flour mixture if the batter starts to curdle.

Beat in the vanilla.

Fold in the flour mixture in two additions, stopping as soon as the dry streaks go.

Fold in the dates with all their soaking liquid.

Expect a batter closer to a thick soup than a cake mixture. That is right, and it is where the pudding's moisture comes from; thickened up with more flour it bakes as an ordinary dry sponge.

Pour the batter into the tin.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the sponge is risen and very dark, springs back in the middle, and a skewer comes out with crumbs but no wet batter.

Put the 150g of muscovado for the sauce, the 100g of butter and the 2g of fine salt into a pan while the pudding bakes.

Melt over low heat, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved and no grains rasp against the base of the pan.

Pour in the double cream and bring it to a bare simmer.

Simmer for 3-4 minutes, until the sauce is glossy and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Keep the heat low and do not walk away from it. Boiled hard, the sauce splits into a butter slick sitting over a grainy syrup and will not come back together.

Prick the hot sponge all over with a fine skewer as soon as it comes out of the oven, going most of the way down.

Pour about a third of the hot sauce over the surface.

Leave it for 10 minutes to soak in, until the top looks wet and lacquered rather than pooled.

Cut into 9 squares.

Reheat the rest of the sauce and pour it over the squares at the table, with cream or the vanilla custard in this collection.