Sticky Toffee Sauce

This is a January sauce. The kind of thing that belongs to long evenings, the curtains drawn early, something hot and sweet on the spoon while the rain does whatever rain does outside. It takes ten minutes and three ingredients that probably already live in your kitchen.

There's no real technique here, just attention. Muscovado, butter, and cream, coaxed together over a low heat until they turn into a dark, glossy pour that tastes like the inside of a toffee tin. The treacle is the thing that lifts it from a sweet caramel into something properly grown-up, with that bitter, smoky edge that makes you slow down between mouthfuls. A pinch of salt at the end, no more than that. We're only making dinner.

Without this sauce, a sticky toffee pudding is just a date sponge, decent enough but not the thing it's meant to be. With it, you've got one of the better puddings this country has produced. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: muscovado, butter, cream, treacle, salt. Five lines. Hasn't changed since.