Sticky Date Pudding is Australia's most beloved restaurant dessert — a dense, moist, warm date sponge cake drenched in butterscotch sauce and served with vanilla ice cream. Despite its British origins, the modern version with butterscotch sauce and ice cream was popularized in Australia in the 1980s and is now the national dessert of choice in every pub and bistro.
Sticky Date Pudding (also called Sticky Toffee Pudding) has British roots, but the modern Australian version — a very moist, date-heavy sponge drenched in warm butterscotch sauce and served with vanilla ice cream — became Australia's most iconic restaurant dessert in the 1980s. It appears on virtually every Australian pub and bistro dessert menu, often as the bestseller. The Australian version tends to be richer and saucier than the British original, with more butterscotch and the mandatory scoop of ice cream. It is the dessert that Australians order when they want something indulgent.
A warm, dark, dense square of date cake, sticky and moist, sitting in a pool of warm butterscotch sauce that has soaked into the sponge. A scoop of cold vanilla ice cream slowly melts beside it. The contrast of warm-sponge-cold-ice-cream and the deep caramel sweetness of the dates and sauce is the most comforting dessert combination in Australia.
The dates are simmered in water (or coffee) and bicarbonate of soda, which breaks them down into a puree that keeps the cake incredibly moist. The butterscotch sauce (butter, brown sugar, and cream, reduced to a thick caramel) is poured over the warm cake and also served alongside. The cake must be served warm (the sauce soaks in) and the ice cream must be cold (for the temperature contrast).
Variations
Some add walnuts; some use coffee instead of water; some add ginger; the sauce richness varies.
On the Palate
Where Sticky Date Pudding sits in the Australian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
8 steps · 40 min active + 35 min waiting
- 13 min
Preheat oven to 180°C; grease a 20-cm cake tin.
- 28 min
Simmer 250 g pitted dates in 250 ml water with 1 tsp baking soda for 5 minutes; cool.
Watch outSimmer the dates with the soda until they slump into a soft mush — that broken-down purée is what keeps the cake so moist.
- 38 min
Cream 100 g butter with 200 g brown sugar; add 3 eggs.
- 45 min
Fold in the date mixture and 200 g sifted flour.
- 535 min
Pour into the tin; bake 35 minutes.
Watch outIt's done when a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs, not wet batter — this cake wants to stay damp, so pull it before it dries out.
- 68 min
Make butterscotch: melt 100 g butter, 200 g brown sugar, and 300 ml cream; simmer 5 minutes until thick.
Watch outSimmer the butterscotch until it darkens and thickens enough to coat a spoon — under-reduced it's thin and won't soak in; over-reduced it seizes grainy.
- 73 min
Cut the warm cake into squares.
- 81 min
Serve with warm butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream.
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