This recipe came up because my friend and talented chef, Kesha Taro, and I were talking about acorn flour. Kesha worked for Gordon Ramsay doing culinary production for decades. She worked briefly on season 10, but I didn’t meet her until season 11 open casting calls, and she was super kind. Flash forward years later, and this acorn flour conversation resulted in me mentioning to Kesha how, due to it tasting like gingerbread, that acorn flour would be good in sticky toffee pudding, and her outright, and very, very generously, giving me the official GR recipe! The OG Gordon Ramsay sticky toffee pudding features a soft, airy date and honey cake, a brown sugar-vanilla bean toffee sauce, and a mascarpone mousse. Now I love all of those things, but I made some obvious substitutions, since I wanted to make this recipe my own, and not just me stealing one that Kesha lent me. My cake, while also containing dates and honey, also uses the acorn flour, just to give it a nice, gingerbread-like flavor. The toffee, just to accentuate the ginger-like notes in the acorn flour, does have a little ginger and orange in there, just to give the toffee a pleasant, tangy background. And instead of the mascarpone mousse, which was made with sugar, gelatin, and egg yolk for a luxurious finish, I went with a citrus-scented creme fraiche, just to further lighten up the cake.

Now, rather than just posting that same Gordon Ramsay recipe for the sticky toffee pudding, and subbing out the all-purpose flour with the acorn flour, I wanted to make some differences to the cake itself. The original recipe used a technique where butter and honey were creamed together, and then eggs were added to that, one at a time. In my recipe, I browned my butter, and slightly increased the quantity(acorn flour, as well as all gluten-free flours, tend to bake really dry, so the additional butter helps to prevent that). Instead of whipping the butter whatsoever, the browned butter is added to a date paste, which the original recipe used as well! Another difference is that I whipped my eggs and honey together to ribbon stage. I opted to do that to give the cake a lightness, similar to a genoise sponge cake. You ultimately want sticky toffee pudding to be light and airy, so that it can soak a lot of that luxurious toffee sauce. The toffee, as I mentioned, it uses orange and ginger, just to give it a more fragrant flavor. I also used salt throughout this dessert, something Gordon’s recipe actually lacked, just to bring in more flavor in each component. The creme fraiche is a lot less technical than the original GR mascarpone mousse, since I wanted to keep it simple, and just fold some orange zest into some creme fraiche for a light, whipped topping to round out the dish with.

For the cake:
1 cup dried dates
1 cup boiling water
2 1/2 tsp baking soda
5oz brown butter
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
a pinch of salt
1 cup acorn flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp xanthan gum

Chop up the dates and pour boiling water over them. Allow the dates to sit with the water for 2 minutes, then mix into that the baking soda. Allow that to sit until the dates have broken down into a paste. Puree with an immersion blender to expedite this process. Mix into the paste the brown butter. In another bowl, whip the honey, eggs, and sugar together until the eggs reach ribbon stage. In a third bowl, sift the acorn flour, baking powder, and xanthan gum to form your dry ingredients. Alternate between folding into the date mixture the dry ingredients and the whipped eggs to form your batter. Spray 12 mini bundt cake molds. Pipe the batter into the molds, filling each up about 3/4ths full. Bake the cakes at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.

For the toffee:
5oz butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
zest and juice from 2 oranges
a pinch of powdered ginger
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp salt

In a pot, melt the butter and sugar and mix periodically. Once the liquid is boiling, take off heat and stir in the orange zest and juice, and the powdered ginger. Once everything is combined, stir in the remaining ingredients to form your toffee.

For the creme fraiche:
8oz creme fraiche
zest from 1 orange
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl, mix everything together using a rubber spatula until just combined. Transfer to a piping bag and keep refrigerated. Alternatively, you can scoop the cream onto the cakes directly.

To assemble:
Start with portioning about roughly 1.5oz of the toffee sauce into pouring glasses. On a plate, place down the cakes and a scoop of cream. Pour on the toffee to serve.