Sticky Date Pudding

When we were in Te Kuiti staying with my Uncle Ben and his wife Katharine we made them sticky date pudding. Katharine heavily hinted to me that perhaps the recipe needed to be posted here, and since it's definitely the right season, and we've discovered this is a good freezer-stocking recipe, I thought she might be onto something, so here we go.

This is a pretty easy recipe - can't go too wrong, doesn't take too long to put together. The most tiresome part is making the sauce - but even that's less than 10 minutes and it only involves stirring, so very doable.

Today I used a combination of ramekins and individual pudding cups to bake the puddings (you can steam them but that will take a lot longer so I don't). You can also make it as one big pudding - but I like doing it this way as we can then freeze single servings to microwave later. It's a bit like having a stock of those single serve microwave puddings you get from the supermarket, but these are much better. ;-)

Sticky Date Pudding (serves 4-6 - can be doubled if you want to stock the freezer!)
Ingredients
180g dates, pitted and chopped
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup orange juice
50g butter
150g brown sugar
2 eggs
180g self-raising flour
Sauce
150g brown sugar
1 cup cream
½ tsp vanilla essence
1 Tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 180 C. Mix dates and baking soda in a bowl, and pour boiling water over the top.

Cream butter and sugar until pale then add eggs, one at a time. Gently fold in the sifted flour, stir in the date mixture and pour into a greased 18cm cake tin. Bake for 30-40 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Alternatively used small greased containers - for a single serve bake for 10-15 minutes

Combine all sauce ingredients in saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring. Simmer for 5 minutes. Pour over pudding and serve!

If you want to freeze some for later put portion-sized puddings into airtight containers, add sauce, then just microwave for about a minute (depending on your microwave) to serve.

So now you have the recipe, Katharine. Perhaps Uncle Ben will make you some for dessert tomorrow?