Old Cape Brandy Pudding

Submitted by Zurie

"An old South African recipe from the Western Cape area. Deeelicious and really worth making on a winter's night. This is S A comfort food at its best!"

 

• Ready In: 1hr 10mins
• Ingredients: 16
• Serves: 6-8

ingredients

• 1⁄2 lb dates, stoned and chopped up
• 1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarb. of soda)
• 1 cup boiling water
• 4 ounces butter (the real stuff)
• 7 ounces sugar, you can use caster sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1⁄2 lb cake flour or 1/2 lb all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

• For the syrup

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3⁄4 cup water
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 pinch salt
• 1⁄2 cup brandy, good quality

directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg F.
2. You need a large ovenproof pudding dish, or 2 pie plates. Grease or spray with nonstick spray.
3. Put the chopped dates in a bowl. Add the baking soda, and pour over the boiling water.
4. Stir to mix and leave to cool.
5. Cream together the butter and sugar until creamy (I use caster sugar, which, being fine, creams more easily). Add the beaten eggs and mix well.
6. Sieve together the flour, baking powder and salt, then fold it into the creamed mixture.
7. Stir in the date mixture, and then the nuts. Fold in thoroughly.
8. Ladle into your prepared dish or pie plates, and put into oven. The baking time is approximately 50 minutes, but will depend on the dishes used. Test with a skewer, but a few crumbs will often adhere to the stick even when the pudding is done.
9. While it's baking, make the syrup.
10. Heat the sugar, butter and water together, stirring, until sugar has melted almost completely. Do not boil.
11. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla, salt and brandy.
12. When the pudding or pies come out of the oven, pour over the hot syrup. It will sink in slowly.
13. Serve hot or cold with ice cream, whipped cream or custard.

Reviews

[rosslare]

Be it winter or summer, very good date and walnut cake pudding. The brandy sauce makes it almost OTT delicious!

 

[Benthe Danish]

Made for ZWT4 – African Dessert Challenge, use no sugar. I replace the sugar with honey, in both the Pudding and the Syrup, and what a delight. We had it warm with whipped cream 30 minutes after it came out of the oven to let the syrup sink in, and it was much better than we had dreamed of. We both like date, but was worried about it maybe being to sweet. But no, it was just perfect. Changed the servings to 2, and got 3 large ramekins. Tried it tonight cold. Did not care for that, then it was a little too bread like. Thanks for sharing Zurie.

 

[Gerry]

Last weeks cool and rainy days perfect for puddings! Made a scaled down version - lucky me or I would have indulged had there been any left overs! Made as posted using caster sugar, unable to decide went with half cake flour and half all purpose flour. The syrup with vanilla and brandy - made for an added touch. Thank you for sharing yet another South African dessert which was thoroughly enjoyed

 

[French Tart]

I made this for my recent African menu night - my Mum makes this too, but I wanted to try out a new recipe! It was exactly as I remembered - Delectable! I did not set out to adapt the recipe, but I did not have quite enough dates, so I used about 6 ounces instead of 8 ounces; I added a few more walnuts to make up for it and it worked out fine. I also used 2 pie plates - one for the meal and one for later! A great recipe and photos to follow......dead batteries in my camera! In my African cookbook & menu.