Sticky toffee pudding and toffee sauce

I made this today for Mother's Day because it is my favourite pudding :) and the toffee sauce is amazing, and would be great made just on its own to go with ice cream.

Pudding Ingredients
50g soft butter plus a little for greasing
175g Dark brown demerara sugar (or just normal demerara if you can't get the dark one)
200g self raising flour plus a little for dusting
1tbsp golden syrup
2 tbsp black treacle
2 eggs
1 tsp Vanilla extract
200g pitted dried dates
1 Tbsp Bicarbonate of soda

Sauce Ingredients
100g Demerara sugar
100g butter
100ml Double cream

Preheat the oven to 190C/gas mark 5
Grease a 23 cm Tin (I use a rectangular one) and dust with the flour to make it non stick.

Using a mixer, blend the butter and sugar  together. Slowly add the syrup, treacle, eggs and Vanilla extract.
***Top tip - grease the spoon you are going to use for the syrup & treacle with olive oil first and that will help them to just slide off the spoon ***
Turn the mixer down to a slow speed and add the flour, mixing just until all ingredients are combined then switch off the mixer.

Place the dates in a saucepan with 300ml of water and bring to the boil. pour dates and water into a food processor and puree. add the Bicarbonate of soda, then whilst this is still hot add quickly to the rest of the pudding mixture stirring well to combine. Pour into the tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until the top is firm to the touch. It can look quite dark but that is ok.

Remove pudding from the oven, allow to cool and then turn out of the tin. You can then set aside to be reheated a piece at a time when ready to serve.

Sorry picture is sideways!

For the sauce, melt the butter and sugar together, add the cream and bring to the boil. turn down to a simmer     until the sauce is the consistency you would like (it also gets thicker as it cools when you take it off the heat.) Reheat a piece of pudding (I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds) then add the sauce. Yum! It is great with cream or vanilla Ice cream, or both : )