New Year’s sticky toffee pudding recipe

The only way to bring in the new year or the holiday season in general is sticky toffee pudding! I had my first taste of this sweet gooey goodness was at a craftfair where a burly Scottish brute of a man decked in full kilt attire shoved an enormous mouthful of the stuff in my face. When a big burly scotsman shoves pudding in your face, you don’t say no! But I fell in love instantly…with the pudding, not the scotsman haha!

So I rushed home to search for a recipe that would capture the intricate mix of flavours I tasted in that pudding for the satisfaction of my enjoyment all year round. But most of the recipes I found were brown sugar-based but I wanted the deep and intense flavour of molasses. Admittedly some recipes did have some molasses but only a tablespoon or 2 in the whole recipe which in my opinion…is just weak sauce.

So I made my own and adapted it from a few different recipes.

Sticky Toffee Pudding Recipe – Scrapaperdoll Edition

Cake

1 cup chopped dates

2/3 cup hot water

1/4 cup butter – softened

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 large egg – room temperature

4 tablespoons dark molasses

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup cake flour (very important to use cake flour, not all purpose flour)

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

Sauce

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp dark molasses

pinch of salt

1/2 cup heavy cream – heated slightly so as not to be as cold as the fridge

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 4 small baking cups. I recommend the Michaels ceramic baking dishes.

   

2. Add hot water to chopped dates to soften the dates. Set aside.
3. Cream butter and brown sugar using a spatula until well combined.
4. Beat the egg, add the molasses and vanilla. Combine with the butter mixture.
5. Sift Flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a separate bowl. Mix well. Gently fold the flour mixture with the butter/egg mixture until the batter is just combined.
6. Use a blender or food processor to purée the dates and hot water. It doesn’t have to be the consistency of butternut squash soup, just smaller pieces with a few chunks is fine. The chunks add a bit of texture differences in the cake but not too much so that it interferes with the normal chemistry of the cake-baking.
   Fold the dates into the cake batter.
7. Pour batter into the ceramic baking dishes and set the baking dishes onto a baking sheet. Pop into oven and bake for 25 minutes or until the a toothpick inserted in the top comes out clean.
8. While the cake is baking, make the sauce. Add the brown sugar, butter, salt and molasses to a sauce pan and cook the sugar mixture on medium heat with gentle stirring every 30 seconds until the mixture thickens. It’s difficult to tell when the sugar caramelizes because it’s already dark coloured but use your nose. You can smell when it begins to caramelize but be sure not to burn the sugar.
9. Once the mixture thickens to your liking, gently stir in 1/4 cup of the warmed cream. Reserve the other 1/4 cup. Don’t use cream directly from the fridge because it may cause the sugar to sieze. Heat the cream in a separate sauce pan slightly to bring it to room temperature.
   Gently add 2 more tablespoons of cream after a few minutes from the reserved 1/4 cup. Once the mixture has thickened, bring it off the heat and let it sit until the cake has finished baking.

   Troubleshooting: If the butter separates from the mixture, gently stir in more of the reserved cream on the stove one tbsp at a time until the butter incorporates into the sauce and it thickens again.

10. When the cake is done baking, invert while still hot onto a plate and generously pour the hot sauce over the cake. Serve with a piping mug of coffee…or spiced rum haha!

This cake is the softest moistest cake I’ve ever made, even without the toffee sauce, this is an amazing cake, the sauce just pushes it over the edge! I can definitely use the cake with a glaze or ganache. It is just so flexible! Instead of dates, I can even use figs or cranberries as well.

Enjoy and leave your comments below!

How to make vintage manly holiday cards tutorial

I made a series of vintage-styled Christmas cards that would be perfect for a male recipient if ever you needed a Christmas card for a dude or maybe just a manly female?

These cards deviate from my normal use of scraps to make cards as the only scraps I used were for the inside of the card for writing a message. However many of the embellies you may want to use for these card styles.

Tools you’ll need:

1. Christmas printed paper

2. Black cards and envelopes

3. Scissors

4. Glue/ATG gun

5. Paper cutter

6. Foam dots

7. Border punch – EK success film strip punch

8. Corner punch

I used a paper stack from Recollections called “Joyful Christmas“. I’ve really been enjoying a lot of the recollections prints, their Christmas collections are really quite well done, maybe better done than many other designer brands out there. So if you’re looking for a versatile paper stack where all the papers just match up really well, try a Recollections stack.

All these cards were made using black cardstock for the card base which I bought at Michaels.

I made three different card styles and 4 cards using just one sheet of 12×12 striped cardstock for the background of all 4 cards! To decorate the background pieces, I used a corner punch from Fiskars.

Style 1: 

I used a fat strip of border paper but then realized that it was too…cream-colored and blended in with the background color. So to make it pop, there was a paper in the collection that was black with white polka dots and I used 2 strips of the black to border the strip of cream. I cut V’s into the ends of the each of the border papers.

The “Joyful Christmas” stack has many sheets of tags and frames that can be cut out. Many of them  have holiday sentiments that just fit so perfectly for a card front. You can also make your own, but I really liked these tags that I didn’t bother making my own.  

style 2:

This card just has a fat band through the middle and a sentiment tag slipped into the middle of the band at an angle. I then cut out a glittery santa and used 3D foam dots to adhere it to the band. Super easy right?

Style 3:

Notice that the background of this card is a little different as it has a strip of red printed and glittered paper at the bottom. Go ahead, mix it up a bit!

For this card, I used my EK success film strip punch to punch long black strips of film to overlay the general card template of sentiment tag over background. Then you I used a “tis the season” sentiment on foam dots to add a sentiment to just above the middle of the card.

And there you are, 3 gorgeous, easy, simple and fast vintage cards for all your vintage needs! 

Have fun making these and please LIKE MY FACEBOOK PAGE if you enjoyed this tutorial!

Until next time!

Ribbon Card – Christmas style

So I have a whole bunch of scrap ribbons that I always feel too attached to to throw out. Plus it’s such a waste and ribbon is not cheap!

Sometimes, when I’m working on a project and there’s just a little bit that I need to snip off except that it’s not long enough for a new project…I would save it in a small zip-lock bag and then create a card like this!

just snip little V’s into the ends of each piece of ribbon. It’s actually better if the pieces of ribbon are different in lengths. Then just put together a few pieces of ribbons that seem to match together.

Use double-sided tape or an ATG gun to glue down the ribbon because wet glue will seep through the fabric of the ribbons and show through.

Here I’ve made a Christmas style one using scraps of Christmas-colored ribbon from other projects.

Then I used a spellbinders frame die and my sizzix big shot to cut out half a frame to use as a border and put a Christmas sentiment on it.

That’s it! So simple and fast! I think i finished this card in about 15 minutes! The hard part was cutting the ribbon by hand haha~

Merry Christmas Ornaments Card

This week I present one of my favourite Christmas cards, which is a great way to use up some chunks of scrap printed papers from other projects as you only need bits and pieces of prints. I recycle this style of card pretty much every year because it’s just so versatile and helps to creatively recycle pretty bits of papers.

I cut the card front out of green metallic cardstock using my Silhouette Cameo by just cutting out circles of different sizes. This can also be achieved if you have movers and shapers die from Sizzix or a circle cutter from EK success or Martha Stewart.

I used a Martha Stewart punch to punch out white sparkly snowflakes out of a white metallic paper by Recollections.

And all the papers I used are from the Recollections Sugar Plums paper pad which I purchase from Michaels last year and created a cute Christmas mini album. I adhered medium silver gems onto the centre of the snowflakes.

One of the papers was this quilted pattern, I glued these tiny silver gems on the crosses of the paper. I bought these silver embellies from the Michael’s 1.50 rack. Wish I’d bought more hahaha! They’re so versatile!

Finally, I stamped “Noel” on the last ornament and embossed it in silver. This is a Studio G stamp which I purchased on sale for a dollar at Michaels last year. Then I tied a sparkly green ribbon on top. I wanted to tie a silver one, but I realized that I don’t have silver ribbon haha!

Then to finish everything off, I used a silver sharpie and just embellished the tops and bottoms of the ornaments and drew curly string so that it looks like it’s being hung from a tree. I guess taught string would have been more realistic but I’m not good at drawing straight lines hahaha!

So that’s it, so simple and versatile. You can do just about anything with the ornaments and use any variety of papers. Be creative and have fun with it!

You know those little strips of patterned paper that we often just toss away? Save them! Next up is a holiday card that highlights the use of scrap strips of pretty patterned paper. Look forward to it!

Thanks so much for enjoying this card and please “LIKE” my Facebook page in the upper right hand corner if you enjoyed this card and support my blog!