Sticky Date Pudding with Hot Butterscotch sauce, to feed a crowd

This delicious Sticky Date Pudding recipe is my go to Winter dessert for feeding a large number of people or for taking to a party for lunch or dinner and makes at least 16 serves. However, the recipe can easily be halved for a smaller dinner party or your family. They will love you for it. 

This dish is also well known as Sticky Toffee Pudding, but it has dates in it, so I am sticking with Sticky Date pudding as the name. When the Winter temperatures plummet, as they have even here in North Queensland, what could be better than a nostalgic, comforting and warming dessert, served with ice-cream or whipped cream, and a smooth, sweet Butterscotch Sauce. Here's the Recipe first, and then read on my friends.

Ingredients:

Equipment:

One large saucepan

One baking dish, 38 cm x 26 cm.

 

Serves 16-18 people

340 gm Dates

3 teaspoons Bi-carbonate soda

600 ml Water

340 gm Castor Sugar

340 gm SR Flour

4 Eggs

125 gm Butter

Boil dates for 5 mins in water. Remove from the heat and add sugar, butter and bi-carb. The mixture will slightly froth up. Allow to cool. Add the beaten eggs and fold in the sifted SR flour. Bake in a Moderate oven (180 deg.) for 45 minutes. The original recipe said to bake it for an hour, but that is too long in my oven. I would check it at 40 minutes, just in case. 

This recipe makes a very large quantity – at least 16 serves. It could be cut into 18 slices, and the serves would still be an adequate size, especially if there are other desserts on offer, or it has been a 3 course meal. Freeze the leftovers, and you will be pleased you did, at a later date.

Hot Butterscotch Sauce

Ingredients:

125 gm Butter

1 cup Brown Sugar

1 cup Water

2 tablespoons Golden Syrup (or Maple Syrup if you live overseas and can't find Golden Syrup)

¼ cup Cream

1 ½ tablespoons Corn Flour

Method:

Combine the butter and sugar in a large saucepan and stir over a low heat until the mixture turns to a thick syrup. Bring to the boil.  Simmer for 3 minutes. Combine water, syrup and cornflour and add to the mixture. Stir until boiling. Simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the cream. This makes a deliciously smooth and silky sauce, which also reheats well. A spoonful of the sauce just slides off the spoon.

After baking this desert, and pouring over the sticky sauce, the only question that's left is what to serve it with. Cream or ice-cream? For me, it's always ice-cream. Mr Mr. HRK loves cream, but will go with ice-cream with Sticky date pudding. What's your preference?

Cook's notes:

• Make extra Butterscotch sauce, you won't regret it when you reheat portions the next day. It is also great for pouring over individual puddings. More is best.
• I don't bother chopping the dates anymore, they break down during the process of boiling them and mixing the batter.
• This pudding is perfect for reheating because it is so moist.
• I make the Butterscotch sauce while the dates and bi-carb mixture is cooling. It can be gently reheated before serving the date sponge pudding.

We are in the last month of Winter here, so there isn't much time left to enjoy this dessert at it's best. During Winter, Sticky Date Pudding is Mr. HRK's favourite dessert, and mine, and always will be. During the height of our tropical Summer, cooking a dessert like this in the oven is just not on, unless of course the air-conditioning is on, or we are experiencing a monsoonal rain event. However, bring on the air-fryer, and note to myself, bake some individual portions in the air fryer as a future project. Freeze them, and take them out and defrost as needed. There are details below on cooking individual servings, which can be applied to the air fryer. 

This is Berenice's recipe, an ex-teaching colleague of Mr. HRK. She served it at a Second Semester Retiree Teacher's Lunch in July that we attended 10 years ago. How time flies. I was smitten with it back then, and have cooked it most Winters, a couple of times since then. So simple, it's a winner. I wrote a post about it in July 2015, and this is a refreshed and improved edition of that one.

This recipe can be halved, and served in 8-9 individual dishes, depending on the size of your dishes. I make this recipe as one large pudding cake, but I also love serving desserts in individual portions. Cooking individual puddings seems to be the more favoured option for  the UK as well. I fondly remember eating Sticky Date pudding for dessert in the cosy British pubs and inns, when we lived over there in Cockermouth in the Lakes District, for 12 months, just over 20 years ago. I also remember doing a survey of which pub served the best Sticky Date pud., it was a close race to the finishing line. It's a beautiful area, but cold and raining more often than not. Perfect weather for enjoying steaming puddings.

The dates contribute to the moistness and stickiness of the sponge in this dish, and give it a beautiful burnished colour. If for some reason you have an aversion to dates, prunes can work as a substitution. Not that I've tried it, but others have, and Nagi from Recipe Tin Eats fame, says yes to prunes as a substitute, so they must be ok. 

 It is best to bake this dessert in a large ceramic baking dish. My dish is 38 cm x 26 cm, which I originally bought as a large lasagne dish. The only problem is fitting it in my oven, but we manage with a little bit of gentle manoeuvring.

Baking individual puddings:

• Pour the cake batter into well greased individual pudding moulds. Only fill 2/3 of the way up.
• Bake for 25 minutes in a moderate oven. The cake will be pulling away from the edge of the mould, and a skewer inserted into the middle will come out clean.
• This is optional, but if you have made extra sauce, poke about 10 holes over the top of each pudding. Spoon over 1 tbsp of Butterscotch sauce for each pudding. Leave it to soak in for 10 minutes.
• Turn the individual puddings upside down onto a serving plate. 
• Serve them with some more sauce and ice-cream or cream.
• This mixture can all be prepared in the one large saucepan. 
• This is a sweet dessert, so reduce the sugar if you aren't that way inclined. It will still be delicious.

For another dessert perfect to serve at a party with the Sticky Date Pudding, the
Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake is delicious and always popular. For the recipe click on the link. I took this cake to the same lunch where the Sticky Date Pudding was served, and it worked a treat as well. 

Warmest wishes,

Pauline

Some more of my favourite recipes using dates:

Slow cooker Chicken and Date Tagine

Aussie style Rustic Date Scones

Date Rollette Biscuits

Middle Eastern Spiced Date, Chocolate and Walnut Loaf