I made cake. Twice. It was nice both times. I will make it again. Here, for posterity, is what I did:
- Turn oven to 180°
- Soak 100g dried pitted dates in some Lady Grey tea (or just hot/warm water)
- Grease/line/otherwise prep a loaf type cake tin
- Cream 100g soft brown sugar with 100g unsalted butter. I love the way this looks like sand. I always want to make sand castles with it. But it wouldn’t work. Or help.
- Add 2 eggs and 2tsp honey, stir/fold it all in really good. It’s usually lumpy for me at this stage. Don’t know if that means I’m doing it wrong. Whatever.
- Sift 100g plain flour, 1tsp baking powder and a bit of ground cinnamon into the mix. Fold it in. It should start to look like cake mix about now.
- Drain dates. I drain into a cup and drink it. Even though it’s usually cold by now.
- Put drained dates in mixer with 100g walnuts. Blitz, but not too much.
- Chuck blitzed mix into cake mix, along with 100g cranberries (raisins would work but they are DEVIL’S FOOD so don’t give me this cake if it has raisins in)
- Stir up. Worry that there’s too much stuff and not enough cake.
- Put into cake tin in a cakey way.
- Decorate the top with pecan nuts. I like to COVER it, but in neat rows, so you can use the nuts as a guide for slicing. As in, one pecan width is a normal slice. Two pecan widths is a slice for me.
- Sprinkle on some chunky demerara sugar. Just for the fun of it.
- Bung in oven. After 15 mins, turn temperature down to about 160°.
- Bake for another 35 mins.
- Remove from oven. Cool (at least a little). Enjoy.
Here is a photo of the first one I made. It doesn’t have enough pecans on top. But it was still nice:
Date and walnut cake