Sticky Toffee Pudding in Advance

Our answer

Nigella's Easy Sticky Toffee Pudding (from Nigella Bites and on the Nigella website) is a "self-saucing" type of sponge pudding where the sauce ingredients are poured over the sponge batter and as the dish bakes the sauce thickens and ends up on the bottom of the sponge pudding.

Unfortunately this type of pudding is not really suitable for pre-preparation. If you bake the pudding in advance then you may find that some of the sauce is absorbed into the sponge as it cools and on reheating you will not have much sauce to serve with the cake. Also reheating in an oven can take almost as long as the original baking time. If you make the batter in advance then you may find that the sponge does not rise that much as the raising agents in the flour are activated when the are mixed with the liquid ingredients and may well have expired by the time the sponge goes into the oven.

However the pudding is very quick to mix and you can measure out all of the ingredients in advance (except for the boiling water). Measure out the sponge dry ingredients in a bowl and stir together, this can be done several hours in advance. Melt the butter and measure out the liquid ingredients into a jug and these can stand for up to an hour at room temperature. Measure out the butter and sugar for the sauce into a separate heatproof jug or bowl, again about an hour in advance. You can boil a kettle while you mix the sponge batter and then once the batter is in the baking dish you can quicky mix the sauce and pour over the sponge before putting everything in the oven.