I'm making sticky toffee pudding again this year for Christmas dinner and I'm wondering why all the recipes I've seen call for boiling the dates in water with baking soda. Every year I do this with a different recipe and it turns the date mixture a very putrid shade of green! This year I'm going to skip that step. Just wondering if anyone knows why dates need baking soda? I'm using fresh medjool dates - if I don't eat them all like candy first!