Well, this is post number 3 from me, after nearly a year of *all this*. I have been cooking, and eating, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but I have so rarely managed to summon the time to sit and gather my thoughts I haven't written about any of my culinary (mis)adventures again since April. In recent months I am very glad to have found that our two-doors down neighbours will take baked goods off my hands once in a while, since baking with the older kid has become very much a go-to activity in recent months. And I have finally found a way of cooking tofu to general satisfaction, which feels like a big win in a generally meatless household. Mainly, this winter has been about soups, as all winters should be, as a way of using the bits from the aforementioned veg box that have failed to inspire, and a change from the inevitable cheese sandwich lunchtimes of home school.
This last icy-cold week, my thoughts have turned to puddings. Proper stodgy things, ideally served with custard, that line the belly and are inadvisable on a regular basis when your daily walks have dwindled to distances dictated by a recalcitrant toddler. A look in the cupboards reminded me of a pack of dates which arrived in the veg box a month or so ago, and for which I had no plans - I am fairly averse to most dried fruit, and neither kids nor husband seemed impressed by them either.
So, I plumped for the sticky date pudding recipe contributed by one of my best friends to a recipe book that I was given when I got married. I rarely cook from recipes, and so I don't get this book out as much as I should do, given that it is full of my friends' best and most successful recipes, which always go down a treat.
Did the photos accompanying the recipes make me miss my wonderful mates even more? Yes. Was the pudding incredibly good? Also yes. Although the weather is warming up a bit now, this is proper comfort food, and very easy, so comes highly recommended if that's what you need right now. I've added a (hopefully legible) picture of the recipe below.
All the cake ingredients go in the food processor (which I dithered about getting for a long time, but has been used at least weekly since it was purchased as a joint birthday present and lockdown indulgence last year), then are poured into a cake tin and slung in the oven.
The sauce is simply three ingedients (butter, cream, sugar) melted together to form a substance for which the word unctuous was invented. No faff, maximum pud. My kind of cooking.
You have to tell us about the tofu someday, when you get a chance. I am mostly so very uninspired by it (unlike dates, which I will gladly eat from the packet and probably won't make it into even such a delicious-looking pudding as this), but I feel like I should keep trying.
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