30 Demeters in 30 Days: Day 21, Sticky Toffee Pudding

I don't really have a sweet tooth: I enjoy eating some sweet things, sometimes, but if a doctor told me that I could never again have dessert or chocolate or cheesecake or whatnot, I'd shrug and get on with my life.

For some reason, though, I really do love the smell of sweet things, particularly baked goods, and I have a whole lot of Demeters to prove it: Croquembouche and Dulce de Leche, Brownie and Tiramisù, Caramel, Orange Cream Pop, Graham Cracker, Cotton Candy.... They're variable in their accuracy--because surely accuracy is one of the main selling points of a Demeter fragrance--but to date, one of the most precise and evocative that I've smelled is Sticky Toffee Pudding.

It smells just like a baked, flour-based, sugar-sauced pudding. There's a thick, slightly molassesy brown-sugar aura to it, not caramel but toffee, and the scent of freshly baked cake, laden with vanilla. It's preposterously delicious-smelling.

There's an element to it that was naggingly familiar, though I couldn't put my finger on it; whatever it was, it was sweet, deep, and luscious. We went to the supermarket this morning to get our weekly groceries, and in the freezer case there was a Sticky Toffee Pudding--really!--so naturally I checked the ingredient list, and second or third was the missing ingredient: dates. Dates! Of course! The Demeter website says,

The core notes expressed in Demeter’s Sticky Toffee Pudding are the dates and the toffee,

and that's just about right.

If you want to smell like a dessert, and I can't think of a single good reason not to (isn't it nice to make people want to nibble you?), then you could hardly do better than Sticky Toffee Pudding.