Eggless Dates and Walnut Cake

The sun has started getting quite lazy these days! He hardly shows up in time in the mornings and even if he does, disappears even before I realize he is there! And he’s in deep slumber by late afternoon itself! In this place in Scandinavia, getting to see him over the next few months would be almost a rare treat! Though the weather calls for nice cozy snuggling one the couch, with warm food, the scope for food photography is almost nil. I’m baking and cooking so many varieties every week, but unfortunately with bad pictures that I don’t even want to see myself!

Thanks to my fore-thought over the last few months of sunshine, I have some posts in draft with some decent pictures. And for the rest, I’ll post some great recipes but with bad pics, till the Sun decides to favor me ;)

So this is one easy breezy cake that I baked a couple of months and saved it for the rainy day (not the cake, I meant the pics for the post). It is a nice moist cake, quite a sweet one - have made adjustments to the sugar after that, in the recipe. Less oil, less sugar, iron rich dates and walnuts… not a bad snack to indulge in, more than a single slice :)

Here it is…

Eggless Date and Walnut Cake

Preparation time: 15 min + soaking time for dates

Baking time: 30-35 minutes

Adapted from: Multiple sources over internet

Ingredients:

All purpose flour/Maida - 1 cup
Baking Soda - 1 tsp
Dates - 18-20
Milk - 3/4 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Vegetable Oil - 1/2 cup (I reduced it to 1/4 cup and it worked fine)
Chopped walnuts - 1/4 cup

Method:

• Sieve together flour and baking soda a couple of times for even mixing.
• Take nuts in a small cup and sprinkle a tsp of flour and coat the nuts with the flour.
• Warm the milk and soak dates in it for 15 min. If the dates are with seeds, remove the seeds after it is soaked.
• Preheat the oven at 180 deg C/350 F.
• Grease an 8" inch round or a bundt pan with oil and dust with a tsp of flour over it evenly on all sides.
• Once the date-milk mixture comes to room temperature grind it along with sugar to a smooth paste and transfer to a wide mixing bowl.
• Add oil to the mixture and mix using a wire whisk until the oil blends into the batter properly.
• Add the flour in four additions and fold in the mixture slowly using a silicon spatula.
• Add nuts to the cake mixture and mix with a spatula.
• Pour the cake batter into the ready tin.
• Bake it in preheated oven at 180 degrees for 30-35 min until done - do a tooth pick test to determine if it is done. Mine was done in about 30 min.
• Cool the cake in the tin for 15 min and invert it onto a wire rack and let cool.
• Cut into pieces after completely cool.

Notes:

• Many sources for this cake called for 3/4 cup of sugar. I did reduce it to 2/3 cup considering the sweetness of the dates. It was still too sweet for our palette, and hence I recommend using just 1/2 cup of sugar.
• Reducing the oil by half didn't seem to affect the texture much