Good pud (Date Pudding with Caramel Sauce

GOOD PUDS- a rich caramel sauce highlights the delicious taste of these yummy Puddings. Nothing says winter more than a hot sticky pudding. This is one of my favourite's and my whole family Love's these puddings. The sauce is Divine and so evil and great with good old fashion vanilla ice cream.

One of my Sister in law's just can't get enough of this sauce and I found this recipe, in one of my many magazines just for her. I should change the name to Shelly's sticky date puddings.

spray oil

2 cups dates

1 cup water

1 teaspoon baking soda

120g butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

2 eggs

1/4 teaspoon salt

1-1/4 cups self flour

Caramel Sauce

3/4 cup each: cream, brown sugar

150 butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

• Preheat the oven to 170c. Spray a 6 hole Texan muffin pan with spray oil.
• Place the dates and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for about 4 minutes, or until there is about 1 tablespoon of water left.
• Remove from the heat and leave to cool for about 2 minutes. Add the baking soda to the dates and stir until combined.
• Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar with an electric beater until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla essence and add the eggs, one by one, beating well after each addition. Beat in the salt.
• Fold in the flour and the date mixture. Spoon the batter into the muffin pans until they are half the three-quarters full.
• Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of a pudding comes out clean.
• To make the caramel sauce, place the cream, sugar, butter and vanilla essence into a saucepan. Stir over a low heat until the butter has melted. Bring to the boil then turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened slightly.

Serve the pudding with either whipped cream or ice cream and a good drizzle of caramel sauce.



Rack of Lamb

 

This is the best Rack of Lamb dish I have come across. Lamb is my husband favourite meat and I made this one day, since then we have not been able to find another recipe to match this one. Michael's all time favourite dish and i think this is what made him fall in love with me. My mother said to me one day just before I started dating him, that a way to a mans heart is through his stomach . Well I think this dish was it. When ever we have people for the first time to dinner this is what I make and its a great pleasure to see them eat and leave with a feeling of satisfaction and comments like, this is better than restaurant food and I would pay for this dish makes me feel like I have accomplished great food.

1 rack of lamb divide this in to for a 2 person meal.

Double this if you have 2 racks

2 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1/4 cup ground hazelnuts

2 tablespoon fine breadcrumbs

1 to 2 tablespoons of dried tarragon leaves

1 to 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese.

• Preheat oven to 200c (400F)
• Trim all the fat. Trim the meat from top and in between each rib bone. Crack the bones at the joints.
• Spread the mustard over the meat
• Mix the hazelnuts, breadcrumbs,tarragon leaves and cheese together. Sprinkle over the mustard, covering completely.
• Sprinkle with melted butter and Roast in oven for 30 minutes.
• Serve with your choice of Bearnaise Sauce or mint jelly preserves.

I found that this recipe was better with Bearnaise Sauce . So I have put a recipe on for you to try. You can buy a already pre made Bearnaise's sauce however I found that this wasn't as good as home made.

Bearnaise Sauce

3 tablespoon white wine

1 tablespoon dried tarragon leaves

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 cup butter (125mls)

3 egg yolks

• Combine wine, tarragon and lemon juice in a small saucepan
• Over high heat. reduce the 2 tablespoons
• In another small saucepan, melt butter and heat almost to boiling
• In a blender or food processor, process egg yolks until blended
• With machine running, add butter in a slow, thin stream.
• With machine off, add reduced wine mixture.
• Process just until blended.