Geraldine's Date Cake

After sitting glumly on my butcher block for the past three weeks, my dryish Israeli dates - cast aside in favor of their juicy, more voluptuous sisters -  were finally used this weekend and, like an 80's movie wallflower in a pink dress at a long-awaited prom, they bloomed and shone.

You all offered up some great suggestions for my dates, but Heather's comment stood out:

"Luisa - I have an amazing date cake recipe from my Granny that is perfect for dates that are a little mangled or tough. The dates soak in hot coffee or chicory so they kind of fall slightly apart, giving the cake this awesome texture. It's got a little bit of chocolate in it for good measure. Let me know if you want the recipe!"

Key words: mangled, tough, a little bit of chocolate.

Um, yes, please?

Heather's grandmother, Geraldine, sure knows her way around a dried date. Her chocolate-chip dappled cake combines coffee-soaked, pureed dates with an easy cocoa batter to velvety-soft effect. This is the kind of unassuming cake that you make once or twice and then commit to memory, enshrining yourself in family lore as the originator of a truly great snacking cake. You can't really taste the dates and coffee, but there are revelatory grace notes of fruit that give the cake an unexpected complexity. The elusive flavor of coffee deepens the chocolate flavor.

I made this cake for dessert on Saturday night and my friend Pat said, between mouthfuls as he ate, that it was the best cake he'd ever eaten. I know this just happened with the squash pie, but I swear to you that I do not put my friends up to this kind of hyperbole. I swear it! They come up with it all on their own.

I loved the fact that the cake required no fussy frosting or gilding-the-lily icing. Sliced into thick wedges, we topped them with a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream. But you don't even really need to do that. It can be nibbled on at the counter in the kitchen or refrigerated and cut into squares for a plain afternoon office snack. I baked it in a 10-inch pan, but you could do a 9 x 13-inch rectangular pan or even a 9-inch round pan for a thicker cake (just adjust the baking time somewhat). The cake is delicate, yet sturdy and has a crumb so soft and moist that it almost melts in your mouth.

I made this cake to get rid of the dates sitting on my counter making me feel guilty, but we've both fallen so hard for it that I've now been instructed to keep our pantry stocked with dry-ish, sub-par dates. It turns out we need this cake on a regular basis. Sigh. Oh, okay. Twist my arm, why don't you.

Thank you, Heather and Geraldine!

Geraldine's Date Cake
Makes one 10-inch cake

2 cups of pitted dates, halved
1 1/4 cups hot coffee
2/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup unbleached white flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup good-quality chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 10-inch round cake pan, line the bottom with a round of parchment paper and butter the paper as well. Set aside. Loosely fill a 2-cup measure with the pitted, halved dates and cover with the hot coffee. Let sit for 5 minutes while you prepare the other ingredients.

2. Cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla extract. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda into the butter-egg mixture. Mix gently to combine.

3. Pour the dates and coffee into a blender or use an immersion blender to puree the mixture completely. Add the pureed dates to the batter and blend to combine.

4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle the top evenly with the chocolate chips.Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the edges begin to pull away from the side of the pan. Cool the pan on a rack until cool enough to handle, then gently turn the cake out onto a cake plate. Serve at room temperature.

Comments

[Judi0044]

Looks divine - so glad it turned out so well. It certainly worked perfectly for those dates!

[kickpleat]

excellent choice, looks amazing!

[Heather]

Luisa, I am so thrilled that the cake was a crowd pleaser; it definitely sneaks up with all these unassuming ingredients and then knocks the socks off! Just a note for other folks too: when dealing with dates that have not hit the rock hard state my mother and I never bother with the blender part, we just roughly chop the dates and let them soak in the coffee or chicory. That's usually enough to get them to fall apart and then you have one less thing to wash!

[Tenny]

Hi, Luisa,
I have the very thing - rock-hard dates - sitting at home and I almost tossed them this weekend. So glad I didn't. Question, though: Is the 1/4 cup brown sugar packed to measure or lightly sprinkled?
Thanks!

[jenny]

oh dear. between you and heidi of 101cookbooks (or rather, alice medrich via heidi) my list of must-make desserts just keeps getting longer. in fact, if I didn't have dough for alice's (courtesy heidi) nibby buckwheat butter cookies chilling in my fridge right now, I'd be making this cake tonight.

I think I need to have a dinner, or at the very least, dessert party ...

[dara]

Thanks Luisa for posting this! Heather's description caught my eye too, as it sounded like my kind of cake! I'll probably cut the sugar way down and use Sucanat instead (I know how that must annoy you, but I do strive to use the unrefined stuff as much as possible) which will add even more, molasses-y depth to the flavors. If I'm eating it as a snacking cake, I prefer that it's only subtly sweet anyways, and with all those dates, I'm sure it will satisfy my sweet tooth. I can't wait!

[Phoebe]

This looks so good. The directions don't say anything about when to add the vanilla and eggs. I assume it's after the butter and sugars are creamed, and before you add the dry ingredients? I might have to make this tomorrow. Thanks!

[Luisa]

Tenny - I sort of packed the brown sugar, so I've gone ahead and fixed the recipe to read "lightly packed"...

Jenny - oh, those are good, good cookies! The whole wheat sables are also worth trying. Oh, Alice. That book is a dream.

Dara - hee, this put a smile on my face. I hope your cake turns out well! Perhaps when you've baked it you can come back here and let us know how it turned out? I know there must be other readers who will want to bake it as you do... :)

Phoebe - woops, sorry. I've fixed it now. You're right, it comes right after the butter and sugars are creamed.

[amanda]

luisa, i love the creativity behind your recipe choices. always different and completely unique. i've never had a date cake at all, but im craving it now!

[Honeybee]

Dates are not usually my friends but after reading this I might just buy some and let them go hard so I can bake this cake.

[Hillary]

I love those photos, date cake doesn't sound good to me, but that sure looks good!

[michelle @ TNS]

i don't really like dates much by themselves, so i'll have no problem buying some and leaving them to dry out a bit for this luscious-looking cake. yum.

[Hungry Girl]

Great cake, great writing as always. Now it's time to play TAG!

Tell five things about yourself and then tag 5 other bloggers...

Have fun!

[Elizabeth]

My grandmother made a very similar cake for the USO during WWII. One variation that she introduced and I've always enjoyed is that she melted the chocolate chips and spread the melted chips on the uncooked batter, then baked the cake. After the cake has cooled the layer of chocolate cracks (less cocoa butter in chocolate chips than in baking chocolate). Yes, you have to dirty one more pot, but the flavor and presentation are wonderful.

Another variation is to soften the date in boiling water, not coffee, but add cinnamon (1 t) and cayenne pepper (1/4 t). You don't taste the pepper, but it gives the cake a more complex sensation (not hot, really) in your mouth.

[Mary Coleman]

If you read this recipe without knowing its history, you would think of something your grandmother would bring out when you visit! I love desserts like this.
Thanks so much!

[ann]

I'm not a big date person, but the texture of this cake sounds right up my alley. In my imagination it's a lot like my favorite cheeses, slightly chewy, but yielding and a little sticky, with the pops of chocolate chips. I'm drooling. It sounds so good.

[Victoria]

Sounds delicious. And you won't believe this. A young man in my office just mentioned a delicious date cake served at Prune, so I gave him yours! Great new picture.

[Caroline]

Great post Luisa! I love old family recipes and especially when they come from friends and Grandma's named Geraldine! Your writing is so refreshing as are your recipes.

Thanks for sharing. I too will seek out dates to pick at and then ignore to drive me to this cake recipe :)

[EB]

I'm in the process of collecting regional family recipes and I love this! Thanks Heather and Grandma Geraldine!

[Babeth]

God! this cake is a killer! Looks super yummy!

[Dawn]

I'm copying this recipe now and noticed something. In the ingredients list it says "baking soda". In the directions, it says "baking powder". Which is it? Thanks! I can't wait to try.

[nbm]

I just made this cake to take to our staff meeting tomorrow morning, and it's very good (I made it in a 9x13 pan and it didn't quite fit in the plastic container, so I had to trim the edge off -- had to, I tell you!) but I'm amazed how the dates, which I usually find a very emphatic taste, are muted below the chocolate. Admittedly I used a very dark cocoa (but no chips, that seemed excessive). I chopped and soaked but did not puree the dates, as Heather suggested; they were plump fresh ones from Sahadi's. But the texture is nice and springy and the flavor rich without cloying. I expect the team will enjoy it tomorrow, and will let you know if there are any insightful comments.

[Luisa]

Dawn - woops! It's baking soda. I've fixed it now; thanks for pointing that out.

[Sheltie Girl]

This looks simply lovely. I always end up with dates that are a bit crystalized. This sounds like the perfect recipe for those.

Sheltie Girl @ Gluten a Go Go

[laci]

i love (love, love!) dates, but am not at all a cake person. this recipe, however, piqued my curiosity. and since i just happened to have the requisite hard dates in the cupboard, i was game to try it out. and oh my - this is one of the best cakes i've ever eaten. not too sweet, no frosting, a sprinkle of chocolate on top. plus the complexity of flavor added by the coffee and dates...

so, in summation: yum. DEFINITELY a keeper.

[abby]

My husband tends to buy dates like they're being discontinued so we often have them sitting around getting stale. I don't like dates but the cake was really good, kind of like a brownie. Next time I'd put chocolate chips in the cake batter, too. I think I might try to swap out the flour for matzoh meal and potato starch for a passover dessert. I really like prunes -- I wonder if it works with them as well...

[Jean]

This is a bit late, but now that you're going to have a steady supply of dried out dates try a Sticky date (Australian nomenclature)/ Sticky toffee (English) pudding. Absolutely delectable!

Sticky Date/ Toffee Pudding (adapted from Stephanie Alexander and Jill Dupleix)

170g dates, stoned and chopped
1 tsp bicarb of soda
300 ml boiling water
60g butter
170g castor sugar
2 eggs
170g self-raising flour
½ tsp pure vanilla
sauce:
150g brown sugar
250 ml cream
1Tbsp butter
½ tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 180C/ 375F, butter 18cm square tin (a round springform tin of approx same volume works fine too). Mix dates with bicarb, pour over hot water and leave.

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Gently fold in flour, stir in date mixture and vanilla and pour into tin. Bake 30-40 mins until cooked when tested with skewer.

For sauce bring all ingredients to boil. Pour a little sauce over warm pudding once cooked and return to oven for 3-4 mins. Cut into squares and serve with extra sauce & a dollop of cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

[Jean]

ps bicarb of soda = baking soda

[Ziggerbean]

This cake was fantastic-- thank you so much for posting it. I made it in a 9" pan (all I had) and liked the taller cake. I also sprinkled chopped chocolate from a large bar of Callebaut over the top since I didn't have chips. It worked much like the poster who recommended spreading the top with melted chocolate but without the extra step (except chopping the chocolate...). I liked the even distribution as I don't like it when chips just sort of sink and disappear in cake/brownies. Great recipe!

[dara]

For those interested in more of a snacking cake rather than a super-sweet dessert, I made the cake with the following changes:

-only 1 cup of dates, which I pureed with a little less coffee than called for
-only 1/4 cup of sugar and I used Rapadura, which is unrefined, evaporated cane juice

It was great, and still very sweet! I couldn't imagine how it would have been more than twice as sweet, but I think I've retrained my taste buds, so I loved it. Because I used less dates, it didn't have a distinct date taste and was more of simple chocolate cake. I think next time, I won't use any sugar at all and I'll up the dates to 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 cups and leave some of them chopped. Oh, and instead of chips on top, maybe I'll use chunks of very dark chocolate for more complexity. But, I will say, this was the perfect chocolate cake for having on the counter and sneaking slices of for a few days till it's gone. Plus, it had the added bonus of feeling pretty virtuous.

Thanks again Luisa!

[pRiyA]

i just made this cake. it is very, very good but still very sweet in spite of cutting down on the sugars. with the dates being so sweet, i'll probably eliminate the sugars completely next time (yes, there will be a next time!).

[ibteda]

Hey, I made this cake yesterday - But switched the chocoaltes chips with assorted nuts & the valinna extract with almond extract.
And Oh.My.God!
This is undoubtely THE best cake I've EVER made. Thank you for the recipe/