Sticky Toffee Pudding Will Always Be Britain’s Headliner
A shout-out on the Glastonbury stage sent Anna Cafolla on a quest to understand Britain’s beloved pudding. Plus, we share her favorite recipe for it.
Cake friends,
How British is sticky toffee pudding, really? And how did a dessert once reserved for a classic Sunday lunch become a staple at Glastonbury festival? This week in the newsletter, we’re sharing an essay by Anna Cafolla, Daily Bread contributor and Vogue editor, tracing the contested history, evolution, and contemporary appeal of Britain’s beloved sticky toffee pudding. She also shares with us one of her favorite recipes, Terri Mercieca’s Brown Butter Sticky Toffee Pudding from The Happy Endings Cookbook.
Meanwhile, our new issue is coming very soon. Keep an eye on your inbox next Tuesday…
Sticky Toffee Pudding Will Always Be Britain’s Headliner
by Anna Cafolla
Olivia Rodrigo strides onstage. “I fucking love England,” she tells the tens of thousands-strong crowd at Glastonbury festival. “True story: I’ve had three sticky toffee puddings since I arrived.”
As the pop star’s stage chat turned from classic British desserts to English boys and first love, I was waning. A final night of dancing lay ahead. Sitting on the sloping hill among the bone-tired, sunburned crowd, my head swiveled from the Pyramid Stage to the glow of the food stalls. I was hungry. I needed sugar. In my almost-delirium, Rodrigo’s sticky toffee pudding (STP) hat-trick felt like a challenge.
I had already consumed two STPs across the weekend. One as a hungover Friday breakfast, and the other on a blazing hot Saturday afternoon when we were feeling silly and a little high, having just watched a surprise set by wonky Britpop legends Pulp. With a voice hoarse from screaming “Disco 2000,” eating a domed, silken-sauced dessert that often follows the classic British Sunday roast dinner in a Somerset field felt absurdly patriotic. I wanted a third. But the dessert was all the way on the other side of the town-sized festival.
Yes STP is cake, but it’s really a ‘pudding’ by British definition—a term that encompasses an expansive list of sweets and desserts, rather than the custardy American version. In its most understood form, the sticky toffee pudding articulates itself as a dark, dense sponge cake made with chopped dates, topped with a sweet toffee sauce, and usually served with vanilla ice-cream, cream, or custard. For me, growing up in Ireland, cheap supermarket trays of sticky toffee were served on Sundays after spaghetti with scoops of our family cafe’s gelato—my dad called it ‘sticky toffee della nonna.’ It might not initially strike you as a festival snack, but to me, the creamy, dairy-laden dessert seems right here.
The festival’s premiere sticky toffee pudding purveyors, Just Desserts, can be found on the languidly cresting pathway between the West Holts stage and Babylon Uprising: Prime spot for footfall and pre-headliner hunger pangs. Since 2002, the Bristol-based mobile operation has been setting up shop at Glastonbury. Returning patrons know exactly where to find them. “23 years, rain or shine,” says owner Kelly Daw. “A gentleman had a banoffee pie from us 10 years previous, and he liked it so much he took a photo, and pinned us to his maps. It led him right back to us.”
Just Desserts’s pastel-toned stall, with cupcakes, cake slices, and fruit signage, leads with the headline: “GATEAUX. CHEESECAKE. PAVLOVA.” There’s a £6 chocolate basque cheesecake, a traybake deal where you can get a rocky road slice or blondie, plus an instant coffee, for £3.50. On Charli xcx’s headline day, a mini green ‘BRAT’ flag was staked in an apple pie. The STP has been there from the start.
Just Desserts is a family business, with five site staff. Daw’s niece is chief taster. The team doesn’t get to bake as much, going from festival to festival, so they outsource by giving their classic recipes to local independent bakers. The treats are frozen and transported to the site, defrosted as they go. “We’re always surprised by how accepted and loved it’s been over the years,” says Daw.
In the heat, people eat less—or maybe, they’ll want a cold cheesecake or something fruity like a pavlova. When the weather turns, warm pudding demand picks up—sticky toffee with custard, or apple pie. Daw knows exactly when the Glastonbury crowds’s sweet tooths stir. “It’s either early in the morning when they’re hungover and need a sugar hit, or late at night for that last bit of indulgence,” she says.
Over the last five years, there’s been more demand for vegan, gluten, and dairy-free options at Glasto. The sticky toffee is gluten-free, made with rice flour. Otherwise, Just Desserts’s STP follows a standard recipe. “It’s the classic, the basic. I think that’s what works best,” says Daw. For Daw herself? “Sticky toffee pudding is a regular, but I do like a carrot cake for breakfast.”
Despite being such a British staple, sticky toffee pudding’s origins are…a bit of a sticky one. Congealed, convoluted, and highly contested, linked to Scotland, Cumbria, and Canada across multiple decades. The overarching belief is that it was invented during the 20th century after World War 2, making use of still-rationed ingredients like butter, sugar, and flour. Some suggest that it was developed from a recipe brought over by Canadian Air Force personnel for a traditional Canadian dessert, Brown Betty, which also incorporates dates and toffee sauce. It’s often credited to Francis Coulson, said to have developed the ‘icky sticky toffee pudding’ in the 1970s, serving it at his Sharrow Bay Country House Hotel. The nearby Whitehaven port would have flowed with dates and sugar—the dessert reflecting Britain’s imperial missions, as Middle Eastern ingredients like dates were brought to British kitchens in the 20th century. Another STP origin story situates it in 1907 at the Gait Inn, Millington—allegedly, its owners later shared their recipe with Coulson—and to The Udny Arms Hotel in 1960s Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Of the 357 stalls on the Glastopedia site of food vendors, Just Desserts is not credited with any cuisine. I would have expected to see it in the ‘British’ vertical, alongside Archie’s Toastie Shop or Barnaby Sykes Pie Maker. The STP is an enduring, distinctly British cultural symbol, held in the highest esteem across the British isles. “Sticky toffee pudding takes me right back to the 1980s, when we served it at the Criterion,” says Roger Pizey, head of pastry at Fortnum & Mason. “When you’ve made something so many times, it becomes part of you. For me, it’s the ultimate comfort dessert, especially on a cold, wet British weekend.” As Jo Garner, head baker at hello JoJo in south London says, it’s a “pub lunch” favorite. It’s a rich and sweet concluding note to a comforting, hearty savory meal, the final dash of decadent to end an English traditional Sunday lunch—especially in the colder months. “A very nostalgic dessert, and one that is hugely accessible to the British public, from school dinners to fancy restaurants, to the ones you can buy in a local supermarket,” says Garner.
British chefs have long been tweaking the STP—Delia Smith broils hers after baking, and adds pecans for texture. A Jamie Oliver recipe adds Ovaltine for a rich and stormy cake color, and yogurt for extra moistness. Frankie van Loo, Executive Chef at London seafood restaurant Applebee’s, created a sticky toffee pavlova. (Another gluten-free innovation, too). Elly Wentworth, executive chef of The Millbrook Inn in South Pool and Devon’s Fowlescombe Farm, adds rum to the sauce to enhance flavor. But classics persist. “I was brought up in the school of Simon Hopkinson, who is avid about originals,” says Jeremy Lee, the Scottish chef proprietor at London’s Soho stalwart Quo Vadis. “ Ours was, until I wove some Scottish magic into the recipe with more dried fruit, spice, and treacle, in an homage to my granny and my folks, who were a dab hand at a treacle pudding. A hug of a dish.”
STP has experienced a sort of revival in the last few years. Maybe, it’s from The Great British Baking Show’s nod, that loving classic English desserts can be cool (and camp). Our pan-cultural love of nostalgia has propelled a resurgence of classic English cuisine in different forms—from the meat pie to the local chip shop, and lots of beige. But the pride of British cuisine is in its puddings: Desserts that utilize leftovers (bread and butter pudding and treacle tart), showcase regional pride (Cherry Bakewell Tarts), that give sustenance and warmth through fierce British winters, like the STP especially, are back on our menus: See the uniform caramel cuboids at The Devonshire pub in Soho—somewhere that’s been successful at making modern British pub food, from STP to the savory suet pudding, Instagram-friendly—and Saltine’s sticky toffee apple cake.
Out the pub doors again and back at Glastonbury’s Worthy Farm setting, and despite the aggressive heat, a wedge of sticky toffee whorled with yellow custard and speckled cold cream, accompanied by a weak cup of tea, felt so comforting. And what can I say, I’m a Londoner—queuing in all elements for a sweet treat and eating it amid tumult is what defines every other Saturday for me. Glastonbury is an endurance sport. This is the great British grasp at the gargantuan spirit of pudding, with no pretence of pretty. Comfort food is welcome anywhere, whether at last orders in the pub or in a safe bit of shade at Glasto, offering a moment of reflection, to concentrate only on the sweep of a wooden spoon through the bubbling toffee skin and through the deceptive, muffiny sponge heft, cold and warm streams of sauces and cream a salve for frayed vocal cords.
—Anna Cafolla
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Read: Former Cake Zine contributor and novelist Isle McElroy has been writing a number of dynamic essays on their Substack.
Visit: One of our favorite small publishers, Mandy Lion Press, which reissues 19th century literary gems, is doing a showcase in Northampton, Mass on August 31.
Read: The Cut is back on the cake beat, this time with a story about violent cake smashes at weddings.
Visit: Bomb Magazine is hosting a small press flea, this Saturday, August 16 from 1-9pm at Amant in Greenpoint.
I still remember the first time I had sticky toffee pudding - soooo good!!