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Medjool Date Sticky Toffee Pudding

November 15, 2018 · Natalie 85 Comments

Medjool Date Sticky Toffee Pudding – a healthier spin on this sweet holiday dessert with a rich grain-free sponge cake soaked in the easiest blender toffee sauce!

THIS POST IS SPONSORED BY NATURAL DELIGHTS®

It’s not that I’m trying to skip over Thanksgiving. Its just that the moment Medjool Date Sticky Toffee Pudding entered my life, I knew I needed to share it with you as soon as possible.

Maybe it is a little more appropriate for Christmas than for a week before Thanksgiving. But we’re already breaking all the rules by making it without butter or refined sugar or grains, so may as well just eat it whenever we want too. And trust me, that time is NOW.

When I think of pudding I think of creamy and chocolate. Actually the first thing I think of is plastic cups layered chocolate-vanilla-chocolate and my middle school cafeteria. But this is a pudding very unlike either of those.

Let your imagination feast on this: rich, grain-free caramel sponge cake with flecks of Medjool dates throughout generously drizzled with the easiest no-cook toffee sauce so it soaks into every cake-y crevasse to create a deliciously moist, slightly dense, cake-meets-pudding perfect bite.

I’ve never had anything quite like it before. The British certainly know what they’re doing when it comes to holiday desserts. Even if I’ve put my own not-so-traditional spin on it.

I love sneaking Medjool dates in to sweeten recipes they aren’t typically used in, but in this case Medjool dates are already a key ingredient in sticky toffee pudding. Where we are veering from tradition is by using only Medjool dates to sweeten (no added sugar!) and keeping the whole thing vegan and paleo with a surprisingly simple list of ingredients too.

We’ve got:

Medjool dates. I recommend Natural Delights® Medjool dates since they are always perfectly fresh and sweet. I used the organic pitted variety for this recipe because hello EXTRA easy.
Water or brewed coffee. Coffee makes for a deeper richer flavor, but it’s up to you. Either way it needs to be HOT to soak and soften the dates.
Baking soda.
Cashew butter. Or almond butter. Or even tahini could be delicious here.
Vanilla.
Lemon juice. Or apple cider vinegar.
Coconut flour. But don’t worry these aren’t weird and crumbly like coconut flour stuff can sometimes be because of…
Tapioca starch.
Salt. Very important in all caramel-y things.

And the toffee sauce is almost too easy – just Medjool dates blended with full-fat coconut milk and a little salt and vanilla for flavor. And yes you will want to drink it with a straw.

I baked my cute little cakes into mini bundts, but you could use a muffin pan instead. Or even sticky toffee pudding donuts sounds good to me…no rules here.

Bake. Flip. Toffee drown. And devour!

If you wanted to vote pecan pie off the Thanksgiving ~~island~~ table and replace it with Medjool Date Sticky Toffee Pudding, I would 100% support that decision. And after one bite I’m pretty sure your family would be very fine with it too.

WATCH HOW TO

Medjool Date Sticky Toffee Pudding

★★★★★ 5 from 16 reviews

Author: Natalie
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 50 minutes
Yield: 4 cakes 1x
Category: cake
Method: baking
Cuisine: american

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Description

Medjool Date Sticky Toffee Pudding – a healthier spin on this sweet holiday dessert with a rich grain-free sponge cake soaked in the easiest blender toffee sauce!

Ingredients

Scale

1 cup (200g) Natural Delights® Organic Pitted Medjool Dates
3/4 cup (180g) boiling water or brewed coffee*
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup (125g) cashew butter**
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp lemon juice or apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup (30g) coconut flour
1/4 cup (30g) tapioca starch***
1/4 tsp salt

Medjool Date Toffee Sauce

1/2 (100g) cup Natural Delights® Organic Pitted Medjool Dates
1 cup (225g) full-fat coconut milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

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Instructions

Pour the boiling water or coffee over the pitted dates. Add baking soda. Stir, then soak for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Transfer the dates, water/coffee, and baking soda mixture to a food processor.
Add the cashew butter, lemon juice, and vanilla.
Process briefly, you want there to be some chunks of date left. (Consider leaving out half of the water for the initial blend as food processors tend to spray if there is too much liquid! Blend briefly, then add the remaining water.)
Add the coconut flour, tapioca starch, and salt. Process to combine.
Transer to oiled mini bundt pans or muffin tin.
Bake for 30 minutes at 350F or until the center feels firm to the touch.
Remove from the oven. Cool for 10-15 minutes before flipping onto a cooling rack.
Combine the sauce ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth. Adjust with more milk if needed to get a pourable consistency.
Pour the sauce over the cakes right before serving. Enjoy!

Notes

*Coffee will give it a deeper more complex flavor, but either is fine.

**Almond butter would be good too, or even tahini.

***You can substitute arrowroot or cornstarch.

Nutrition

Serving Size: 1 cake
Calories: 385
Sugar: 35g
Fat: 16g
Saturated Fat: 3g
Carbohydrates: 57g
Fiber: 6g
Protein: 8g

Keywords: vegan, paleo, grain-free, christmas, cake, dessert, gluten-free, healthy

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Snickerdoodle Breakfast Cookies

November 12, 2018 · Natalie 60 Comments

Holiday cookie meets healthier ingredients in these soft-baked sugar-coated Snickerdoodle Breakfast Cookies. Vegan, gluten-free, and easy to make!

Little puffy, sugar crunch-coated bundles of cinnamon-y sweetness that are the perfect mix of holiday cookie meets healthy ingredients.

If I’m being honest, lots of indecision was involved in naming these cookies. Because yes, they are made with wholesome things like oats and hemp seeds and applesauce. But also yes, they are coated in cinnamon sugar because they wouldn’t be snickerdoodles without that. And yes, I have eaten them for breakfast. But I ‘ve also eaten them for an afternoon need-sweet-motivation-to-get-in-a-few-more-hours-of-work snack. And also for dessert at 1 a.m. with friends and ice cream.

So they should be called Snickerdoodle Perfect Always Cookies. But I think Snickerdoodle Breakfast Cookies sounds better, don’t you?

What qualifies a cookie as a “breakfast cookie”?

To me, there are a few key elements:

Oats. Must be involved.
Maple syrup. Because it is the most breakfast-y of all the sweeteners.
Protein of some kind, nothing crazy.
Fruit in some form.
EASY. Because, let’s be real, we are lazy in the mornings.

These cookies check all the boxes: yes, yes, hemp seed and cashew butter, applesauce, done in less than 30 minutes and can be prepped ahead of time. See, they earned the title. But still deceptively delicious enough that you could bring them to a holiday cookie swap. Winning. At. Life.

I don’t think you need me to tell you how good cinnamon sugar is. I mean that is why the cookie part of the snickerdoodle exists, right – to transport the cinnamon sugar to your face? Not only is it perfect and sweet and spiced and cozy and perfect, it also makes the cookie extra crispy on the outside. Which makes the soft inside seem even more pillowy. And makes the first bite a straight up cookie-eating EXPERIENCE. So even though we are going with the whole “breakfast cookie” thing, cinnamon sugar is definitely happening too.

Can you use coconut sugar instead of cane sugar? Yes.

Will it dissolve more while baking and give you less of that marvelous crusty sugar coating thing we love so much? Yes.

Will I be a little sad for you to miss out on that? Most definitely. But it’s up to you!