Sticky Date Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce

Sticky date pudding is a very common Australian/British dessert. Pudding in this sense is not the creamy stuff that we in USA know, but more like a soft and moist cake. Made with fresh dates, this recipe is very delicious and pretty easy: the product being a moist and succulent cake. The sauce is, well, the icing on the cake, but it should be skipped if you suffer from any heart problems. It's creamy and very rich. This recipe came from the awesome employees at Mrs. Flannery's Organic Wholesale Market (via abc.com.au). I know it's crazy for me to have 2 desserts in-a-row without chocolate but, trust me, this one's worth it.

Prepare:
-Chop up a bunch of dried, pitted dates (1-1.5 cups, after chopping)
-Ready 100 g (1/2cup) and 150 g (3/4cup) of brown sugar, separately
-Ready 50g (<1/4cup) and 80g (<3/8cup) of butter, separately
-1 cup self-raising flour
-32o ml (1 1/4 cups) of water
-300ml cream (<1 1/4cup) cream
-1 tsp baking soda
-2 eggs, lightly beatenCook Pudding:
-Preheat to 375F
-Heat water to boiling, add dates and cook, stirring and mashing often until it's one uniform goo-Take off heat
-Mix in baking soda and let stand for 5 minutes
-Blend in sugar and butter (1/2 cup and <1/4cup respectively)
-Mix in eggs and flour
-Pour into a loaf oven pan and cook for 1 hour (toothpick should come out dry)-Cool for 10 min
-Serve with sauce on top

Cook Sauce: (this takes ~15-20 min, so start ~45 minutes after you put the cake in the oven)
-In a saucepan/thick frypan mix cream, sugar, and butter (3/4 cup and 3/8 cup respectively) on medium-low heat, stirring constantly-Cook for about 15-20 min, tasting every so often: there should be no sharp butter taste, but rather taste rich and butterscotchy
Tips:
-This is very rich and sweet. You could lower the sugar by almost half, probably, in the cake or the sauce or both and it would still turn out okay, especially if you upped the amount of dates
-Served with fresh, but not sweet, fruit and/or tea and coffee, this would be good
-You could also serve it with a vanilla or banana custard