Drinks advice

Sticky toffee pudding with Kopke 20 Years Old

Out of the oven come four small date purée puddings, light and dark, with a warm toffee sauce of cream, butter and soft brown sugar over them. Opposite them the port sets a twenty-year-old tawny, whose vanilla and dried fruit sit alongside the date and the caramel.

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Sticky toffee pudding
Photo: thefoodplace.co.uk, CC BY 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Kopke is a port house from the Douro, founded in 1638, with lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia. This is a tawny with a twenty-year age statement: a blend of wines in oak casks whose average comes to twenty years. According to the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto, a twenty-year-old tawny gains concentrated fruit in those years and aromas reminiscent of roasted vanilla and dried fruit. The bottle is 20 percent alcohol and holds 75 centilitres. For tawny the institute recommends a serving temperature of 10 to 14 degrees.

Kopke 20 Years Old

The combination

Why this works together

This is a combination in which the plate and the glass do the same thing, by different routes. In the pan, cream with soft brown sugar and butter is boiled for so long that the sugar caramelises and a toffee sauce forms: dark, sweet and with a slight bitterness. In the cask something similar happens without fire: twenty years of slow oxidation turn the fruit of the port into caramel, toasted vanilla and dried fruit. Those aromas sit alongside the sauce instead of against it. The date makes the connection even sharper: a date is dried fruit, and that is exactly what the institute points to in a twenty-year-old tawny. The cream carries the whole, since fat takes away the sharp edges of a port of twenty percent, and the pudding is sweet enough to hold its own next to such a sweet glass.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 45 minutes
  • Type dessert

What you need

  • 75 g pitted dates, chopped
  • 75 g soft butter, plus extra for greasing
  • 50 g light brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 140 g self-raising flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 150 ml whipping cream
  • 75 g light brown sugar for the sauce
  • 25 g butter for the sauce

How to make it

  1. Put the dates in a saucepan with 75 ml of water. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until soft and the water has been absorbed. Gently stir to a purée.
  2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, or 160 degrees fan. Grease four 150 ml pudding moulds and line the base with baking paper.
  3. Beat the butter and the 50 g of caster sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs and vanilla extract, then fold in the baking flour and the baking powder.
  4. Stir in the date purée and divide the batter among the moulds. Place them in a roasting tin and pour boiling water into the tin until halfway up the moulds. Cover with aluminium foil and bake the puddings for 25 minutes, until risen and firm.
  5. For the sauce, put half of the cream with the 75 g soft brown sugar and the 25 g butter in a heavy-based pan. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, stirring regularly.
  6. Turn the heat up and let the sauce boil on for 3 to 4 minutes until glossy and thick. Then stir in the rest of the cream.
  7. Warm the sauce through once more and pour it over the little puddings.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this twenty-year-old tawny at 10 to 14 degrees; half an hour in the fridge usually brings a bottle at room temperature there. Use a tulip-shaped glass and fill it no more than a third. Decanting is not necessary, because the wine is cask-clarified. According to the institute, an opened bottle of tawny with an age statement stays good for one to four months, because it has been used to oxygen in the cask for years. Store it upright in a cool place.

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Wij verkopen geen alcohol aan personen onder de 18 jaar. NIX18