Sticky Date Pudding - but CAKE
Created by AI
Last weekend, my aunts came to stay (hi Lucy!), and we had an interesting discussion about ChatGPT and its use in the workplace, or for life in general. I have many opinions on the merits and downfalls of relying on generative AI at work, but I shall try to refrain. What I will say is, yes, I do use it at work. I think it’s great for SOME things, but I also worry that it’s removing a lot of personality and authenticity from everyday communication. I don’t know about you, but I can tell when a colleague or company has used ChatGPT to send me an email. And it doesn’t make me like them.
Despite all of this, it reminded me of a cake I made around the same time last year for the same aunts. I had gotten the recipe from ChatGPT.
I had turned to ChatGPT after scouring and failing to find the perfect recipe on the internet. I had two quite specific requirements:
I wanted to make a sticky date cake – cake, not pudding, it was for a birthday after all.
It needed to use buttermilk. I had bought a carton of buttermilk with the idea of making some cute Sunday morning pancakes (lol, who did I think I was?), so it was quickly turning (more) sour in the fridge.
I typed in something along the lines of ‘Could you please write me a simple step-by-step recipe for a sticky date cake with a sticky toffee sauce? The cake must have buttermilk in it. Ingredients to be metric.’ And 3 seconds later, I had a recipe.
I decided as an experiment, I would trust the process and follow the recipe, exactly.
And honestly, I tried. But I couldn’t. As I went through the steps, a couple of things didn’t quite make sense, and my logical, have-baked-a-couple-of-cakes-in-my-time brain couldn’t commit. So, I made some tweaks. But the essence of the recipe remained the same. And it was VERY GOOD.
In fact, you’ll see the write-up of the recipe, with my changes below.
But should we be using generative AI to write recipes? Oh, heck no.
While it understands concepts like the basics of making a cake, it’s just mushing a bunch of recipes together and hoping for the best. It’s only as good as the information it has access to. If a common error is repeated over and over in online recipes, it will be repeated by ChatGPT. Once you recognise that, you realise the limitations and the potential for disaster.
It’s also been trained to recognise patterns in flavors and ingredients, but it hasn’t been trained to respect or credit the cultural identity of the dishes it creates. This can cause serious harm to the longevity and history of the dishes and the communities from which they originate.
And then there is the personal touch you get from your favorite chefs and cookbooks. It can write something ‘in the style of Ottolenghi,’ but ChatGPT, after all, cannot smell and it cannot taste. If it tells you something works, you have no idea who did the original smelling and tasting to prompt that advice.
Maybe we need to change the old saying, "never trust a skinny chef," to "never trust a bot that can’t smell or taste."
Anyway, here’s the recipe—which has been tested by me. Who you can trust. I think!
Sticky date pudding cake
Ingredients:
200g pitted dates, chopped
1tsp baking soda
240ml boiling water
115g unsalted butter, softened
200g sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
240g all-purpose flour
1tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
120ml buttermilk
For the sticky toffee sauce200g brown sugar
120ml heavy cream
55g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 175°C fan-bake. Grease or line a 23cm round cake pan and set aside.
In a small bowl, combine the chopped dates and baking soda. Pour the boiling water over them and let soak for 15 minutes while you do the rest.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together the softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each edition. Finally, add in the vanilla extract.
In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Gradually alternate adding the flour mixture and buttermilk to the creamed butter mixture, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. For example: add ⅓ of the dry ingredients, ½ of the buttermilk, another ⅓ of the dry ingredients, the remaining buttermilk, and the final ⅓ of the dry ingredients. Mix well after each addition.
Using a slotted spoon, drain the dates and add them to the cake batter. Mix well until combined. Reserve the date soaking liquid - we’ll use that later.
Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan, smoothing the top with a spatula. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
While the cake is baking, prepare the sticky toffee sauce. In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar, heavy cream, and butter. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract.
Once the cake is done, remove it from the oven and let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Using a toothpick or skewer, poke several holes in the cake. Mix half of the sticky toffee sauce with the reserved date soaking liquid and pour it over the cake, allowing it to soak in.
Carefully transfer the cake to a serving plate. Cut into wedges and serve with the remaining sticky toffee sauce and ice cream or cream.
If you can get your timing right, this is so good eaten still warm from the oven. But if you want to make it ahead of time, you can re-warm the cake in the oven or microwave (make sure to take it out of the metal tin first, but I didn’t need to tell you that) and gently heat the sauce on the stove. Try not to blast the sauce with heat as it can split. It’ll still taste good but it’ll look a bit funny.
It’s the right time of year to be making this orange cake too. I still love the yoghurt, sour cream whip over cream nine times out of ten.
Drew made these cookies a few weeks ago. They are very large and very intense. But delicious in moderation.
I may not be making pancakes but in attempt to glam up my breakfasts, I’ve been making this custard porridge from Jen (someone whose recipes you can 100% trust). I like it with vanilla yoghurt, tinned peaches, and a couple of frozen raspberries on top, like a poor man’s breakfast trifle.
That’s it, that’s all.
Rosie