A tray bake for the sweet tooth hungry hoards, this delicious date caramel shortcake is fairly quick to make and takes around 35 minutes to bake. Yum Yum! They look great and are easy to make. The shredded short pastry gives a nice aesthetic finish and the dates add a lovely toffee flavour. You can make your short pastry in various ways using cake margarine for the calorie counters or with butter and icing sugar.
Date Caramel Shortcake recipe
For the shortcake base & grated top
115g caster sugar
1 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
1 egg
250g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
For the date caramel filling
175g seedless dates roughly chopped
10g butter
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
250ml water
Pre-heat oven to 180˚C 350˚F, grease and line baking tray (18cm x 27cm) with baking parchment
Beat the butter sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then transfer to a bowl. Fold in the combined sifted flour and baking powder in batches with a metal spoon.
Press half the dough into the tin. Form the other half into a ball, cling and refrigerate for around 30 minutes.
Put the dates, brown sugar, cocoa, extra butter and 250ml of water into a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring. Reduce the heat and simmer, stirring for 12-15 minutes, or until the dates are soft and the water has been absorbed. Spread onto a plate and refrigerate to cool quickly.
Spread the filling over the pastry base with a metal spatula, then grate the remaining dough over the top. Bake for 35 minutes, or until light brown and crisp. Leave in the tin for 15 minutes, then lift onto a wire rack. Sprinkle with icing sugar.
*You can use a basic sweet pastry for your base and grated top of you like. Use the 3 2 1 percentage, that is 3 of flour, 2 of cake margarine and 1 of sugar.
*You can use a basic sweet pastry for your base and grated top of you like. Use the 3 2 1 percentage, that is 3 of flour, 2 of cake margarine and 1 of sugar.
Coming soon...Bite size fruit and nut loafs
Doing some experimenting with some new mini loaf moulds. It seems that bite size is a very popular fad at the moment. Will post more in due course. I used a basic vanilla cupcake mix and added mixed chopped nuts with sultanas and raisins... yummy
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