Nothing like a steaming hot date pudding with caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream!

Recipe from Toast: http://www.toast-nz.com/2010/09/supper-club-4.html

Sticky Ginger Date Pudding with Caramel Sauce
200g dates, chopped
1 1/4 cups boiling water
60g butter
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g crystallised ginger, finely chopped (I added powdered ginger instead)

sauce:
1 cup cream
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla essence

Mairi's directions

Preheat oven to 180°C. Pour water over the dates and butter and stir to melt. Add baking soda and cool.  Stir in the brown sugar and golden syrup.  Add eggs and vanilla essence and stir well.  Gently fold in the flour, baking powder and finely chopped ginger.  Don't over mix.  Pour in to greased muffin tins for cute individual puddings or a 24cm square tin.  Bake for around 30 minutes or until a skewer has come out clean.  

Bake 40 minutes when making one large one.  Just keep an eye on it - you don't want to replicate my first effort at Delia's.  I had what I thought looked like the perfect pudding so I didn't bother with the skewer test.  Big mistake as it was raw in the middle and I don't mean just a little I mean when I was tipping it out the beautiful top just fell off to reveal a gooey uncooked mess in the middle!  On second attempt and a few minutes longer, and the skewer test it was delicious.

For the caramel sauce place all the ingredients in a pan and stir over heat until the sugar dissolves.  Bring to the boil and boil for 5 minutes until reduced.  Serve over the puddings and top with creme fraiche or whipped cream would work too.  The sauce will keep in the fridge for a week, so you could make a little extra if caramel sauce is your thing as I reckon it would be pretty good just warmed up a little and served over some good vanilla ice cream.