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Date & Walnut Cake

With this recipe you can either create a loaf cake or muffins, or both!

Sweets & Desserts
Intermediate
Time 50 Minutes
Skill Level Intermediate

Ingredients List

Serves 12
  • 0.5 cup brown sugar (white can be used but flavor isn't as good)
  • 2 tsps ground ginger
  • 2 tsps mixed spice
  • 0.5 tsps nutmeg
  • 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (not a highly flavored one. See note below)
  • 0.5 tsps bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 cup boiling water
  • 0.5 cup walnuts finely chopped (use half walnuts for decoration. Note below)
  • 2 cups self-raising flour (I use wholemeal)
  • 1 cup dates - chopped
Metric - US Imperial

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 175°C. Fan-forced oven – about 150-160°C.
  2. Place chopped dates in a small bowl and add the boiling water. Leave dates to soften and cool down for 15 minutes.
  3. Put into mixing bowl the sugar, spices, walnuts, flour and bicarbonate soda. Mix well. Add dates, water and olive oil and gently but thoroughly mix.
  4. Pour into a greased & lined 20cm x 10cm (8in x 4in) loaf tin or 12 x muffin tin.
  5. Bake in oven for about 40min. (I have a fan-forced oven and find that it’s best to cook at 150-160°C, and watch carefully that the top of the loaf doesn’t brown too quickly – cover with foil if it is).

20 x 10 loaf tin (don’t worry too much about size)

Notes:

  • Don’t use a highly flavored olive oil.
  • I use packet walnuts for this recipe as fresh are a bit too much work!
  • Reduce cooking time considerably for muffins i.e. about 15 minutes for large, 10 minutes for mini-muffins.
  • When loaf/muffins are cooked (insert a skewer to bottom of loaf tin and if it comes out clean, it’s cooked), leave it on your kitchen bench to cool for at least 30 minutes before removing from loaf tin.