sticky date pudding with hot butterscotch sauce

This is one of my favourite pudding recipes. It's very quick and easy and the ingredients are usually on hand. Plus it stores so well. You can make it in a cake tin, or in muffin trays for individual puddings, and it freezes and reheats great (just wack it in the microwave and it actually gets better!). The sauce lasts really well too. This is a great dinner party dessert - I don't know anyone who doesn't absolutely love this recipe.

You will need:

300g dried dates
2 1/2 cups water
2 tsp bicarbonate soda
150g butter
140g caster sugar
Juice and zest of 1/2 an orange
4 eggs
300g self raising flour

What to do:

Put the dates and water in a deep saucepan and place it on a hob over high heat. Once it comes to the boil, remove from heat and add the bicarbonate of soda. This will fizz (and boil over if you haven't removed it from the heat). Put a lid on the saucepan and set aside.

Cream butter, sugar, orange zest and juice for 5 minutes, until pale in colour. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition. Sift the flour over the butter mix and gently fold in.

Make sure the bicarb soda has properly dissolved in the date mix, so that there aren't any lumps, then pour into the butter mix. Fold through until well mixed.

Pour into a greased cake tin and bake at 180'c for 40 minutes. Check it's done by inserting a skewer. If it comes out clean, it's cooked. This is a pudding and is meant to be quite moist, so the skewer has always come out a little sticky for me.

For the butterscotch sauce, put equal portions each of cold cubed butter, double cream and soft brown sugar into a saucepan and whisk constantly over low heat. Serve with ice cream or cream.