Sticky date pudding

I had homemade sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce for dessert tonight. I bought the ingredients to make it last week, but have delayed making it till today - because the thickened cream for the sauce expires today. I soon found out that today wasn't to be such a good day in the kitchen for me.

Where to start? First, I developed a painful blister on the palm-side of my index finger from hand-dicing 1/1/4 cups of dried dates (someone had decided to store my packet of dried dates in the fridge, making them even harder) over at least half an hour with a knife that begs to be sharpened - but of course the self-sharpening knife sheath is no where to be found when I need it. Cutting a large amount of fridge-cold dried fruit with a small, blunt knife is definitely not a good idea and I'll never do it again. Next, as I am wiping clean the electric hand beater, the cable catches one of the two eggs that I have left out to come to room temperature, and it flies off the bench and splatters on the floor and over my foot (good thing I was wearing an over-sized long apron). Then, as I was grabbing something off another bench, I accidentally nudged a container, which was for some reason sitting right at the edge, and before I knew it, I had half a kilo of halva in a heavy, thick, hard, plastic tub fall squarely onto my big toe, which is now wholly sore and bruised from the main toe joint. It's very tender to touch between the joints too, so I wonder if the bone has been smashed, me having weak bones and all. I breathed deeply and hoped the resulting cake would be worth the pain.

The recipe I used was an Australian Women's Weekly recipe, which was posted on the community recipe section of the Nigella Lawson website. I'm not sure if I am allowed to post the recipe here, for copyright reasons, so I will provide the link to the recipe instead: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/sticky-date-pudding-1934

I didn't make any changes to the recipe, except that instead of using the food processor to do everything, I did everything manually. There's two reasons for this: firstly, I think that one of the main joys in baking is derived from the actual manual process. On the practical side, toddling about in the kitchen also keeps the mind from idle thoughts and provides much needed exercise, if, like me, you spend most of your days off work during Winter largely housebound. The second reason for not using the food processor is quite simply that I have a gorgeous, brand new, top of the range (I think) lipstick red Kenwood handmixer/food processor thing that is still in its massive box in the kitchen, and I have been too lazy to take it out, clean it, and clean and make a clearing on the kitchen bench to provide a permanent station for it, amidst my assorted mess of cake tins, mixing bowls, cake plates, etc. Of course, after this finger blister experience, I am going to assign all date chopping chores to the food processor from now on. I should point out though, that through hand-chopping, I was able to discover a whole pip that had been left in one of the dates (Freshlife brand, in case you're interested) - imagine if someone had unknowingly bitten into it! I don't imagine processing the pip in the batter will make the cake taste that great either.

If you are also someone who prefers to make the pud without the aid of a food processor for whatever reason, you could follow what I did:

Hand dice the dried dates, then soak them in the boiling water, in a bowl, with the bicarb stirred through. Then cream the sugar and butter together; beat in the eggs, one by one; stir in the date mixture (being careful if you are using an electric beater when doing this, because it is likely to splatter); and lastly, fold in the flour.

The 1 hour baking time seemed a bit excessive to me, but when I poured the batter into the cake pan, it did look rather thin, so I assumed that was probably why it needed so long in the oven. The cake tester came out clean after exactly an hour, but I was concerned it might be a bit dry.

For the butterscotch sauce, I decided to make it in a make-shift double-boiler, i.e., I combined everything in a large mixing bowl and cooked it over a saucepan of simmering water. The reason I did this, instead of making it directly in the saucepan, as per the instructions, is because I used a portable gas cooker, the temperature of which is hard to control, and which has a tendency to very quickly burn things, as per past experiences. Turns out today was destined to be a fail day for me, because although I kept the mixture over the heat for a very long time, until all the water in the pan had evaporated, the sauce only just thickened ever so slightly. I gave up after all the water was gone and it became a safety hazard, and ended up with a butterscotch sauce with a runny consistency, so it was more like a syrup.

Plating up time was the moment of truth. 

When I turned the cooled cake out (though I would have liked to have served it warm), I found it to be well-risen (considering how thin the batter looked), damp, moist and tender. I can't say I've had sticky date pudding on many occasions, simply because there's always been other more appealing desserts on the menu that would win me over, so I am not particularly well acquainted with the taste. If what I made is anything to go by, I enjoyed it, because it's moist and tender, without being overly sweet, but I'm not a big fan, especially of the smell of the dates. From memory, I believe the pudding is supposed to be wetter...but I could be wrong. I drenched mine in the butterscotch sauce/syrup, and the sweetness of the sauce definitely adds a nice dimension to the dessert. I do wish we had vanilla ice-cream in the freezer to accompany it though!