Date Caramel Shortcake

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 

125g unsalted butter

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

Icing sugar to sprinkle

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.

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