Recent Posts Widget Extended

I am trying to alter the way this plugin works just a bit. For example:

1) I have the date of the post showing, but it only shows the month and year format. I tried adding the d attribute to the code for the date format in the plugin’s files, but it’s not working. Am I missing something?

2) I want to make this behave like a links widget, so I have utilized the Custom URL feature of the Humphrey child theme from Genesis as well as the Link Format option so that the title will instead open the custom url, but I need it to open in a new page. Any suggestions on where I can add the target attribute?