Pour Some Sugar on Me | The Daily Post

Posted on 10 February 2016 by SJPONeill

Source: Pour Some Sugar on Me | The Daily Post
What is your favorite sweet thing to eat? Bread pudding? Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies? A smooth and creamy piece of cheesecake? Tell us all about the anticipation and delight of eating your favorite dessert.

I like dessert and while I am probably to be the first of the group to opt for dessert when dining out, I’m more a savoury than sweet kinda guy…that being said, this prompt could have only one response…a family favourite, our butterscotch pudding…

What really floats my boat with this one is the crunchy caramelised crust that goes so well with cream and, if available, ice cream – if you have to choose between one or t’other, go for the cream…When it is about three-quarters done the caramel flavour will waft across the living area from the kitchen, building anticipating…I normally drop it in the oven just before serving up the mains – the bake time provides just enough time to eat the main, enjoy some good conversation and let the previous course settle before serving it up…

Now, yes, I did make this one specially for this post – none of that “here’s one I prepared earlier” malarkey – and, no, it doesn’t mean that I fell off the dairy-free wagon…just jumped off to quickly check the tyres…

What you need

1 cup of flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder (or just use self-raising flour if you lean that way)

60 grams of butter melted, 30 grams of butter

1/2 cup of milk

pinch of salt

1/2 cup of sugar (sounds like a lot but the original recipe demanded a full cup)

2 tablespoons of golden syrup

2 cups of hot water

What you do

Heat the oven to 180 degrees

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar milk and melted butter together.

Pour into a greased pan.

Mix the hot water, golden syrup, and 30 grams of butter together until the syrup and butter have dissolved into the water.

Pour this over the dough in the pan.

Fan bake for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown and crusty on top.

Remove the pan from the oven and let sit for five minutes

Serve with cream and ice cream (vanilla preferred). Now, this being a (probably temporarily) dairy-free home, a couple of minor issues arose. As a part of a related programme, we had, at some time last year, replaced the the white sugar with raw sugar. Shouldn’t make a difference and didn’t but adds to the “it’s healthier” ambience of the dish…

There was also no cow in the fridge…only varieties of not-cow milk…vanilla almond milk volunteered to take the plunge and in it went…also didn’t make a difference to the finished product…a good lesson learned…

This is the most popular dessert in this household and production is only second to the dateless/sauceless version of Dinner Dates that I knock up when attacked by the late night dessert munchies…the recipe will happily feed six people and has been doubled with a good result…It freezes well and the source caramelises even more when reheated…a real winner and now done healthier…

Rice Pudding – OTT…

Posted on 10 September 2015 by SJPONeill

The Pioneer Woman’s Meat Loaf is a big fav here so we were really looking forward to trying her take on rice pudding…

We made it as per the recipe except we substituted normal syrup for the light corn syrup (you can get light corn syrup?)

We’ll give it another go some time but it was really a bit of a disappointment – really a case of less is more – it was so sweet, it wasn’t very nice: the sweetness totally overwhelmed the taste of the raisins which are usually a nice offset to the texture and flavour of the rice mix…and not even a hint of the whisky taste survived the process…

Next time we’ll drop the condensed milk right out of it and try the topping from our dinner dates adventure…though I’m not sure that we really need such a topping with rice pudding and that by focussing more on the flavours in the rice, all the accompaniment it should need is a scoop of ice cream… might have a crack at gently reducing the raisin/whisky mix to emphasise those flavours – although 1/2 cup of whisky is a sacrifice not made easily…

Our one highlight was using the raisin infused leftover whisky to drown our sorrows afterwards…

Dinner Dates

Posted on 19 September 2014 by SJPONeill

I had an attack of the late night sweet munchies a few nights ago and wanted something quick and simple to satisfy the urge. There has also been a large jar of dates in the pantry that has not been getting much attention recently and the last thing I need is a jar of time-expired dates…

The winning contender was this recipe from The Whimsical Wife…

Ingredients:

The Pudding

10-12 dates, roughly chopped

1 1/2 Tbsp Boiling Water

1/8 tsp Baking Soda

11/2 Tbsp Butter

1 1/2 Tbsp Brown Sugar

1 1/2 Tbsp Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1 Egg (originally this was one egg between two desserts but was too dry)

1 Tbsp Walnuts, roughly chopped

The Sauce:

4 Tbsp Brown Sugar

1 Tbsp Butter (originally only a teaspoon but not caramelly enough)

4 tablespoons of cream (originally this was only a teaspoon of milk or cream but this led to a sauce that was more fudge than sauce – the extra liquid makes all the difference).

Method:

Place the chopped dates and water in a large mug and microwave for 50 sec until the dates are softened.

DSCF8748 Add the Bicarb soda and let it sit for 30 seconds before mashing the dates roughly with a spoon.

DSCF8749 DSCF8751 Add the butter and place again in the microwave for 10-15 seconds to soften and melt.

DSCF8752 DSCF8753 Add the sugar, egg, walnuts and flour and mix to combine thoroughly. The original recipe called for only half the walnuts and for these to be sprinkled on top – I think I get a better result mixing more walnuts throughout the mix.

Place in the microwave on a sauce for 1 minute. It may need a further 10-20 sec to finish it off completely, depending on your microwave.

For the caramel sauce, place the the sugar, butter and cream into an ovenproof ramekin and microwave for 20 seconds.

Remove and stir and repeat another three times.

Shake the sticky date pudding from the mug into a dessert plate, and add ice cream.

DSCF8755 …and cream and drizzle the sauce over it all. you can see from these pics of my first attempt that there simply isn’t enough sauce to be useful…

…and that it is quite fudgy…not the desired effect at all. I didn’t have any cream handy for this go-round so it was even drier…

…whereas my modified version has a rich caramel sauce that soaks into the sticky date pudding and mixes with the cream…

Finished!!

Definitely a keeper but very very very rich – even I could only eat this maybe once a week at most…the pudding itself is a lot less gooey than the other similar cake in a cup desserts that I have tried so I intend experimenting with it further to see how it goes in the chocolate, banana and golden desserts in a cup that I have played with previously…

Golden Cake in a Cup

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A couple of months back, I kicked off my 30 Cake in a Cup Challenge. The challenge I am finding is that I am not really that much of a dessert person at the moment and so have not been feeling that driven to try more cake in a cup recipes. A couple of nights ago, though, I did have an attack of the munchies quite late in the evening.

I’m not really a big chocolatey person but I do a mean butterscotch pudding when cooking the ‘normal’ way: I thought then that I would experiment with the chocolate cake on a cup by swapping out the cocoa for a tablespoon of golden syrup for a butterscotch cake in a cup dessert.

It really was that simple, and with all the ingredients mixed together, looked like this.

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I thought that I might have to teak the amount of syrup but a single tablespoon was just right. There was a bit of leakage but I have long since learned my lesson about using a ‘just in case’ plate to prevent messing the microwave tray. Some thing in the dynamic has changed a little as this variation does not stay risen as well as the chocolate version…I may add a smidgen of baking powder next time. Thinking on it, next time I may also reduce the syrup content just a little too…

My plan was to have a third picture showing the golden cylinder plated nicely with a curl of ice cream. I keep the ice cream in the freezer in the garage so that it is not as accessible in the event of a munchie attack but when I went out the scoop and a plate, I found that the freezer was so cold that the ice cream was frozen solid, like, rock solid and that was the end of that plan and I didn’t even have any cream to pour over instead…I’m note sure what happened with the freezer: the controller is at floor level so possibly it has been knocked when I have been working in the garage…

But not too worry…it is a nice variation of the chocolate cake in a cup theme…

Update 3 June 2014

I had an attack of the munchies later on Sunday night and made this again. This time I did a straight swap cocoa for syrup, and also added a dash of baking powder. One of these changes must have made the difference because it rose a lot better that my earlier attempts, enough that I will probably use a bigger cup next time…

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