If you are casting around for a Christmas dessert, or what to serve at any upcoming holiday party, may I suggest mini sticky toffee puddings. Sticky toffee pudding is alchemy. It consists of a date cake soaked in a buttery toffee sauce, but the flavour combination transcends the fairly humble ingredients it's made from. It doesn't really have any showy, braggart ingredients, nothing hard to source or especially expensive. But the combination is almost magically greater than the sum of its parts. I'm not exaggerating, it's transcendent.

My family have been having STP as Christmas dessert for a few years and we have always made it in the traditional way, in a big pan. To increase toffee sauce-cake permeation I poked lots of holes in the cake with a skewer, hoping get the sauce really soaked in there. But I thought that creating a larger surface area for sauce contact would really help them get thoroughly sauced. I used a miniature bun to bake these and the little nooks and crannies really catch the toffee sauce. If you don't have a mini bundt pan, use a muffin tin or a 8" round cake pan, increasing the baking time to around 50 minutes.

Note: Both puddings and sauce freeze very well. Just reheat sauce and cakes when thawed in a 350° oven.

Adapted from Martha Stewart

date cake

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and extra for the pans
8 ounces pitted dates, finely chopped
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Butter and flour the mini bundt pans or whichever pans you will use. Heat oven to 250° F.

Boil a kettle and combine chopped dates with 1/2 cup boiling water in a small bowl. Cover with a lid or plate and set aside. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.

Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy and add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Blitz the soaked dates in a food processor until a chunky paste forms. Add flour mixture, date paste and vanilla to mixer bowl and mix on medium until just combined, making sure to scrape the bottom.

Using an ice cream scoop fill bundt pans 2/3 of the way full. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. I found that they released from the pan best when they were still hot. Wiggle a toothpick around the edge of the pans to help unstick them, and pull them gently away from the edge with your fingers once they are cool enough to not burn you. Once they are pretty loose, pry em out.

toffee sauce

1 cup butter
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients over low heat in a small saucepan. Simmer about 10 minutes.

To serve, pour warm sauce over mini puds, and add a little bit of cream or ice cream if you like.

Photos: Tyrel Hiebert

If you have been following along with the beef wellington posts, you will already have puff pastry, duxelles and green peppercorn sauce. You are practically finished already. Now it's time to put everything together and make some wellingtons! I'm giving instructions for individual portions because I like how they look on the plate: like little parcels or wrapped up gifts. They are more handsome served than slices of a large beef wellington, which never turn out like the beautiful, even layered cross-section slices I see in pictures on other recipes. For me, the slices wind up slumped sadly and frequently missing layers that got stuck to somebody else's slice. Making individual portions solves this problem and provides a very generous ratio of pastry to everything else.

Happy holidays, merry christmas, talk to you next year!

mini beef wellingtons:

1 beef tenderloin, thin end removed and saved for another use.
1/2 recipe puff pastry
1 recipe duxelles
4 slices pancetta
1 egg
a splash of cream
1 recipe green peppercorn sauce

Salt and pepper the beef on all sides and sear over high heat until browned all over. Remove and cool. Slice into four small steaks, as evenly sized as possible (I made them about 1 1/4 inches thick).

Mix the egg and cream to make a was for the tops of the beef wellington. Set aside.

Roll out puff pastry, using a bench scraper to keep it in a square. Roll it out until it is about 20" x 20". Cut the pastry into four equal squares.

Lay a slice of pancetta over a square of puff pastry, so that it hangs off the edge.

Smear a little duxelles over the pancetta and place a piece of tenderloin on top. Add duxelles to the top and sides of the beef.

Wrap the overhanging pancetta over the top of the tenderloin and pull the corners of the pastry over the top of the meat. Brush egg wash over the pastry edges as you work so the overlapping pastry is glued together.