I love sticky dates, a popular dessert involving of a very moist sponge cake, made with finely chopped dates, covered in a caramel sauce and often served with a vanilla custard or vanilla ice-cream.

To make this great, soft, still moist pudding I need to find some juicy dried dates—pitted are my favourite in my pantry first. Hooray!!!! I got 1 packet unopened yet. To make a deeper and darker sticky pudding enjoyable and heartily soothing my soul. I am adding American stout that my brother in law gave me.

Today I am craving for a cool alcohol and sticky dates pudding as it’s extremely hot at 30 degrees C. My desire at time is so strong with a need for alcohol. That’s I admit I can’t resist it as well as dessert. Afterall, we live to eat and might else well add in and enjoy my craving. More heavy alcohol consumption on top of wickedly addictive to it. That will make you drools. Everyone gets second helping if I cut it a tiny bit or small portion. I am having half of the whole tray. If you see a drunk wickedly witch flying over your roof wave at me and if I am kind enough, I will throw you some, Enjoy!!!

Ingredients

380 g dates, pitted
350 ml water
400 g self-raising flour, sifted
5 eggs
330 g caster sugar
135 g soft butter
2 Tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 Tsp vanilla essence
1 Tsp Parisan browning essence

Salted stout caramel sauce
300 g brown sugar
300 g unsalted butter
300 ml vanilla custard
2-3 Tsp salt
3 Tbs Treacle syrup
200 ml American stout

Method

Preheat oven 180 degrees C. Grease a large square baking tray must have depth of 5 cm or 6 cm. Combined dates, bicarbonate and water in a hand mix blender; blend till soft, and then set aside. Beat butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer until sugar dissolved, thick and pale, and then add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Fold in vanilla, date mixture, Parisan browning essence and then flour. Mix well. Spoon mixture into baking tray and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until springy to the touch and skewer inserted comes out clean.

Salted stout caramel sauce

Place all ingredients into a large saucepan except treacle, and simmer over a low heat until dissolved. Increase to medium heat and allow mixture to bubble away about 5 minutes. Add treacle, and stout. Add more salt if you like saltiness, and bring to bubbling simmer, remove from hob. Set aside in saucepan until ready to use to pour over the pudding once it’s done.

Remove pudding from oven and use a chopstick to poke holes on the top of the pudding. Spoon 3/4 of the salted stout caramel sauce over the pudding to soak in and return to oven for 10 minutes until sauce bubbling. Remove from oven and spoon remaining salted stout caramel sauce to seep through the holes. Serve pudding with the thicken cream, or double cream or ice cream or vanilla custard.

Note: Oven temperature may vary. You might need to put in oven for 45 minutes; check with skewer: comes out clean or needed to put in oven longer. You might want to serve the remaining of salted stout caramel. I prefer to spoon all my salted stout caramel into the dates mixture. I also like a bit more salt. You can put 1 -2 Tsp salt only.

https://helenscchin.com/2017/03/03/sticky-dates-pudding-with-salted-stout-caramel-sauce/

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