Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

Sticky toffee pudding, with its rich, mocha-brown color, its dense, decadent interior, and its sweet-and-salty, tacky topping, is not for the faint of heart. It is dark and brooding. It is lavish. It is distinctive. And it is a serious showstopper.Why is it different from any other cake? Because the fruit is the star of the show, literally outweighing every other ingredient in the recipe. By macerating the fruit, you turn it into an integral part of the batter, making the cake incredibly moist while packing it with flavor. Add some freshly scraped vanilla beans and a bit of butter, and you have a deeply decadent, complexly flavored sweet.You could stop with just the cake itself, but it’s the holidays, so go ahead and punch a bunch of holes in that confection, then drench the entire thing in whiskey-spiked toffee and sprinkle a fat pinch of flake salt over the top. If you’d like, follow that with a giant dollop of hand-whipped cream and add some ripe figs and cherries for a splash of color. Then set out the spoons, take your seat at the table, and succumb to the sticky toffee pudding. Move over, bûche de Noël. Holiday dessert just got a whole lot sexier.

Sticky Toffee Pudding