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 some black treacle and Parisan browning essence. This pudding is so comforting that it deserves to be covered in both a rich salted caramel sauce, I am adding some salt and Bourbon in.

By now, you might be pondering if there is any distinction between sticky date and sticky toffee puds. “Australian sticky date is very similar to Britain’s sticky toffee pudding. From what we can see, the only difference is in the name,” says Vianni Crennan, of Hunter Valley-based company The Pudding Lady, which sells puddings all over Australia.

As it’s a cold, raining and gloomy day. Needed a dessert that will make me satisfied and give me a full belly. Really needed for comfort, warm and hearty delicious dessert to last till next morning.

My pudding with salted bourbon caramel sauce is a great comfort dessert, delicious, satisfying my soul. It certainly had kept me warm and it’s my family favourite too and is on Christmas dessert menu in my house. Serve it with vanilla custard, ice cream and extra salted bourbon caramel sauce. Let’s cook!!!

Ingredients

400 g dates, pitted
420 ml water
420 g self-raising flour, sifted
6eggs
330 g caster sugar
135 g soft butter
2 Tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 Tsp vanilla essence
1 Tsp Parisan browning essence

Salted bourbon caramel sauce

300 g brown sugar
300 g unsalted butter
300 ml vanilla custard
2-3 Tsp ground pink salt
4-6 Tbs Treacle syrup
20 – 35 ml Bourbon Whiskey

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 dish and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until springy to the touch and skewer inserted comes out clean.

Salted bourbon caramel sauce

Place all ingredients into a large saucepan except bourbon, and simmer over a low heat until dissolved. Increase to medium heat and allow mixture to bubble away about 5 minutes. Add bourbon. 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. Spoons half of the salted bourbon sauce over the pudding to soak in and return to oven for 10 minutes until sauce bubbling. Remove from oven and spoons some more to seep through the holes if you like before serve pudding with the thicken cream, or double cream or ice cream or vanilla custard. Enjoy!!!!

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/2017/03/19/sticky-dates-with-salted-bourbon-caramel-sauce/

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