Chocolate Sticky Date Pudding

Sticky Date Pudding with Leatherwood Honey Caramel Sauce
Sticky Date Pudding with Leatherwood Honey Caramel Sauce

Sticky Date Pudding is one of my mum’s best desserts. She has turned it into an art form that few restaurants can come close to matching in my book. The texture of the pudding and the richness of the caramel butterscotch sauce is a combination of rare and special beauty that can be the perfect ending to a great meal.

So doing my usual trick of butchering good food with my own shoddy attempts at making them, I went off and tried to make it myself. I didn’t have time to get the recipe off mum, seeing as it was already about 9:30pm when I decided I was going to cook it, and so I went off to the net to find a recipe. I did my usual trick of combining the essence of about 15 different recipes into my own unified Jeet Kune Do (“I have developed a form of fighting with NO fixed positions!”) style sticky date pudding recipe.

As an interesting addition, I thought i’d make the sauce with honey, and funnily enough, after reading JenJen’s list of 5 things to eat before you die, I happened to come across a small tin of Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey in Fresh Provisions Mt Lawley (who incidentally also have Black Summer Truffles !), and I thought i’d give it a try.

Ingredients For pudding

  • 1 cup dates (or figs even) (stones removed unless you like a bit of bite)
  • 1/2 chocolate bits
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup orange juice
  • 1 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 cups plain flour
  • 50g butter
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs

Ingredients For sauce

  • 50g butter
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup tasmanian leatherwood honey
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

How I made mine

Rummage through your cupboards until you find the one baking dish you bought a few years ago with all good intentions of using to make cakes and the like. Rinse out the dust it’s been collecting and then smear the insides with butter. Sprinkle flour inside and chill in the fridge. Or alternatively, get new age fancy style silicone containers and not bother at all. Preheat your oven to 180C.

Chop up the dates and simmer in a pan with the water and orange juice for 5 minutes. Take it off the heat, stir in the baking soda, and watch a glorious volcanic eruption of foamy goodness. Sit that aside for 20 minutes or so while you prepare the rest. Resist the temptation to taste it, because this mixture is kinda nasty at this point.

While that mixture is standing, into a bowl sift together flour, baking powder, and a pinch of salt (i may have even added a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon here, just because it felt right).

Meanwhile back at the ranch, in a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then beat in the eggs in one at a time. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, beating after each addition until just combined. Add date mixture and with a wooden spoon stir batter until just combined well.

Pour batter into your pan and put it into a bane marie (larger pan/tray filled with water) with enough hot water to reach halfway up the sides of smaller pan. Slide it carefully into the oven and bake until a metal probe comes out clean, which I found was roughly 45 minutes.

Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey Sticky Date Pudding

Now for the sauce…
In a heavy saucepan melt butter over low heat and add brown sugar, then carefully pour the honey in. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to a bubble, stirring occasionally, then stir in cream and vanilla. Stir it around for a few minutes until its thick and smooth.

Serve straight away by cutting a sizeable chunk of pudding and smothering it in the sauce, with a good helping of cream or ice cream on top to help assuage your stomach from the heavy onslaught of the determined forces of pudding and sauce.

fin.

14 thoughts on “Chocolate Sticky Date Pudding”

  1. Mm, looks yummy! At the risk of sounding like *une stupide americaine*… I always do a double take when I see pudding that looks like.. cake. Bad habit. Thankfully i’m not too fond of either where I might order a pudding expecting a cake… heh. Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey, hm. I wonder if that can be had here without paying 3 arms and a pair of legs.

    BTW, – the VII? I’m the 8th Yvo?! =O And actually, I’ve been reading your site for a few weeks now, but only now realized that I should comment so you know you’ve got another reader. Oh, and re: FoodCandy, I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I signed up for it anyway. I wouldn’t mind some extra traffic to my site, since I’ve just moved it from an only-members-can-comment blog community (Xanga) to Blogger, so I’m thinking FoodCandy can help me with that. I just want to spread the word about good restaurants in NYC, and share my recipes with the world :)

  2. Matthew, the pudding looks almost as good as mine! I add grated orange rind for that extra zing, and the mixture has cocoa powder and double cream in it as well as chopped chocolate bits. Hope the birthday evening was relaxing. love mum

  3. Hey nice,

    and btw the coolest food blog in the world has his mum commenting on
    your receipes

    just cool

    dtm

    P.S – dessert on fri nite?

  4. Hey Yvo… Yes the pudding deal can be confusing when it’s not all wobbly and having the consistency of sloppy yoghurt…but don’t worry, you’re not the first American to get tricked.

    I checked out Food Candy a bit more… decided its not my cup of tea. Can’t say I was ever into the whole community blogging/journal type deal… its the recidivist in me. Plus I could never get one of the cool “point the camera at your face while looking all sultry” photos to come out right…

    Oh, and the VIII thing was a lame car reference that no-one else will get…but i found amusing… :)

  5. Mumma… I like how you said it looks “almost as good as” yours… Which at least gives me room for improvement. I think next time i’ll probably make it in smaller dishes… or the ramekin things I bought to make souffles… because the one big cake was a bit too much and didn’t look as nice on the plate. I will take the orange rind under consideration too.

    Dtm: don’t encourage her… I will never be able to pass off her desserts as mine anymore if she tells everyone how to do it better… which she can easily do being the queen of the dessert.

    And im not sure if sticky date pudding is really a steak and poker kind of dessert… but we’ll see.

  6. Nice pud. How did you like the honey? The guy that sold it to me said you will either love it or hate it. I happened to love it, so I was just wondering what you thought.

  7. Hey JenJen, loved the honey. Although I’m not sure why anyone would hate it… I didn’t get the honeycomb like you though… so perhaps that might make a difference due to the added rawness (?). I found it a really nice combination of earthy sweetness… so thanks again for the recommendation.

  8. Hello there, the pudding looked really great. I’ve always wanted to make a Sticky Date Pudding after eating one in Maisys when I arrived here in Sydney, which was really really great. Thanks for posting the recipe
    cheers :)

  9. I usually spent about S$20 to pop in my favorite restaurant/ cafe in Singapore just for this dessert. Now after I try this (if successful) I wonder if it’ll still be my favorite restaurant/cafe….

    Thanks for sharing this great recipe!

    Oh, btw, can I exclude the choc chips?

  10. I looked at the celeb. cooks recipes and yours tasted the best as I read it
    I would use some olive oil though for more moisture, perhaps as part of the butter.
    k

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