Salted Caramel and Sticky Date Pudding

With the arrival of sweater weather, we will be seeking to serve up something delicious and festive to friends and family. For many Platypus Wine Tours guests across the country, the temperature is already substantially lower than wine country California. To help warm you up we’re sharing a sweet, simple and ‘sticky’ date dessert for you to enjoy with your favorite wine. This salted caramel and sticky date pudding is perfectly moist and moreish and sure to hit the spot this winter.

This pudding works delightfully well as a sliced dessert bar or the cutest individual Bundt cake. As soon as the these puddings are removed from the oven, you will poke them with lots of holes using a skewer and pour over a generous helping of hot salted caramel sauce. The caramel filled center means these will keep for days, even a week in the fridge and once reheated, will taste oven fresh.

Note: For best results with baking, purchase a digital kitchen scale. The following measurements are listed in metric values.

Ingredients

For the Sticky Date Pudding

9oz pitted dates, roughly chopped

1 tsp baking soda
1 cup boiling water
40 g brown sugar, loosely packed
80 g unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs, at room temperature
85 g plain flour (all purpose)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

For the Salted Caramel Sauce

200 g/ 1 1/4 cups brown sugar , loosely packed
375 ml ml / 1 1/2 cups thickened cream (heavy cream)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
70 g / 5 tbsp unsalted butter
½ tsp flaked sea salt

 

To Make Sticky Date Batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350F.
  2. Grease 7 x pudding molds with butter OR line a 8″ square cake pan.
  3. Mash dried dates by placing dates in a bowl with baking soda. Pour over boiling water and allow to stand for 10 minutes. Mash well with a potato masher (or fork) until it resembles sloppy porridge.
  4. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and beat until pale and smooth.
  5. Add whisked eggs and beat until incorporated.
  6. Whisk together flour and baking powder separately to evenly distribute. Add flour mix until incorporated.
  7. Add dates and mix quickly until dates are well combined into the batter
  8. To create one pudding cake: Pour into cake pan, smooth surface and tap lightly on a surface to remove air bubbles. Bake 35 minutes or until skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
  9. To make individual puddings of Bundt: Pour batter into pudding or Bundt molds to fill 2/3 of the way. Bake for 25 minutes, or until skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
  10. Pour over ½ – 1 cup salted caramel sauce over your cake/s and leave to soak for 10 minutes.
  11. Serve warm with remaining warm sauce and ice cream or cream.

 

To Make Salted Caramel

  1. Place ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Once butter is melted, stir, then bring to simmer.
  2. Simmer for 2 minutes, stirring once, then remove from heat. Add salt flakes, stir and serve warm.

 

Make sure to serve with a spoon of sweet vanilla cream. The only question is will you serve it with red wine or dessert wine? Which wine from your trip to wine country do you think would pair well. Leave a comment on our social media page. Haven’t toured with us? Join-In on one of our famous wine tours throughout Napa Valley and surrounding areas.