Tags
brown sugar, butter, cake, dates, Dessert, fruit cake, Parties, sweet tooth, sweet treats, tea party
This cake is not for the faint hearted or the “clean” eaters… but its the best cake ever!
Ingredients:
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 3 cups of all purpose flour
- 5 eggs
- 1 cup of milk
- 2 tsp of vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp of baking powder
- 1 – 1.2 kg of black dates (those are native to North Africa and the MENA region)
to grease 2 large cake pans
- 2 cups of sugar
- 1- 12/2 cups of butter
Directions:
- Peal, deseed and half your dates, and place them in a clean tray.
- In a medium bowl whisk together the flour and baking powder and set it aside.
- In a large mixing bowl cream the butter and both 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of granulated sugar till pale in color. hen gradually add in one egg at a time as well as the vanilla extract. the batter with become frothier and double in size.
- gradually fold in the flour mix, alternating with the milk and your batter should look like the below picture
to grease the trays
- In a different mixing bowl beat the sugar and butter to make a paste.
- line your baking tins bottoms with parchment so the dates don’t stick !
- divide the sugar butter mixture into both trays and spread it evenly on the bottom.
- Arrange the date halves from the outside inwards like in the picture below.
- Then divide the batter onto the dates– the batter should just about cover the dates with a little.
- I would recommend placing the cakes in trays if they are spring pans because the syrup from the butter sugar and dates may leak!!
- preheat your oven to 160 C (320 F) bake the cakes until the center of the cake is no longer raw, should be between 35-40 min depending on the cake size.
- Once out, carefully flip the cakes while hot– so they don’t stick to the pans.
I normally cannot wait till they cool and eat slice after slice right out of the oven!! if you can, wait for a bit and serve– could also be served with a side of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream
ENJOY