My cousin and her husband came for a visit, took my parents and me out for lunch and dinner for a whole week. Yesterday, is their last day here. So, my parents had invited them over for dinner. I made this dessert as they requested. My other sister bought roast duck.

My father’s friend gave him a bottle of tawny port. He gave it to me. I have added this tawny port, added plain flour to finished off, cut down the water to 300 ml in to my sticky dates pudding. My cousin and her husband ate two big serving and asks me if they can take some home. I gave them some.

Nearly forgot to take a picture, phew I got the pic and left one small piece.

Sticky dates pudding is great in Cold Winter Day, everyone enjoyed it. Everyone gets a second as one of my sister cuts for everyone a small piece. It was a great family gathering. The dessert is awesome as my cousin said it was so too her husband. Let’s bake Winter Day comfort pudding for our soul!!!

Ingredients

300 g dates, pitted and cut into bite size
300 ml water
225 g self raising flour
75 g plain flour
1 Tsp bicarb soda
90 g butter, softened
225 g castor sugar
3 eggs
1 Tsp vanilla essence

Caramel sauce

150 g brown sugar
300 ml thickened cream
50 ml tawny port
200 g butter

Method

Preheat oven 180 degrees C. Grease a large 5-7 cm deep round baking dish or rectangular baking dish. Combined dates and water in a pot over medium heat. Cook for 5-8 minutes or until dates are very soft. Add in tawny port, stir to mixed well. Then add in bicarb soda and stir, then set aside to cool, off hob.

Beat 90 g butter and castor sugar in mixing bowl until thick and pale, then add egg one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold in vanilla and dates mixture then both flours. Spoon mixture over to prepared baking dish and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hours or until springy to touch or until skewer in and out clean.

Meantime, make caramel sauce. Combined all the ingredients in a small pot and stir over medium heat until boiling. Simmer for 2 -5 minutes or until combined and glossy. Now prick some holes with a chopstick all around the cooked dates mixture. Spoon the caramel all over the dates, letting the caramel drips insides the holes and on the all sides. Bake for a further 5-10 minutes, until bubbly all around and there is a glaze on top. Serve warm or hot with vanilla ice cream, custard and thickened cream. Enjoy!!!!

Note: Oven temperature may vary. You might need less time or more. You might just want to use self-raising flour only. You can omit tawny port and just use water instead in the dates mixture. You don’t want to use too many dates; just use 225 g of dates.

https://helenscchin.com/2024/07/10/sticky-dates-pudding-with-tawny-port/

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