Eggless Dates Cake and Special Occasions

I have never shied away from saying that I love trying different flavors in cakes rather than overly decorating them. Covering a cake in multiple layers of frosting may increase the "wow" factor but somehow doesn't appeal to me. I would much prefer to consume calories laden with flavour rather than trying to find flavours within layers of buttercream . Though cake decorating did fascinate with me for sometime but after many buttercream flowers later , a good cake for me is pure flavor and not spoonfull of sugary cream or even fondant for that matter. Last year tropical flavors were on my lust list and were incorporated into many bakes and for this year it seems as if exotic flavors have caught my fancy.

Baking an eggless date cake has been on  my bucket list for the past few months. But as in life , there is a time for everything seems true for baking as well. Other bakes kept on getting preference and the box of dates kept to itself in the pantry. Not that it did not give me forlorn glances !! I tried to pacify it by nibbling on a date or two every time I visited the pantry but that actually made it more morose . It seemed it was begging me to make it into something more deserving of it's stature. Finally it's prayers were answered when feeling particularly charitable on my special day , I gave it a new avatar - an eggless date cake.

Notes : The original recipe comes from here . Few liberties were taken by me . can't help it ! Instead of 18 dates as in the original recipe, Increased them to 24 . Sugar was decreased from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup. You must have guessed the reason behind it..more natural flavor and less artificial one. The sugar I did use was brown sugar  and did not pack it tightly. The cake was still deliciously sweet and perfect for my taste buds. If you have more of a sweet tooth, do increase the amount of sugar by all means.

Ingredients -

24 dates ( pitted )

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup oil

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

Method - 

Pre heat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease/flour a springform baking pan .

In a pan , bring the dates and milk to a boil and let cool for 20 minutes.

Now add the sugar to this mixture(dates and milk ) and give it a quick run in the blender to make a paste.

Take the paste out and add the oil to it.

Meanwhile , in a separate bowl , sift the flour along with the baking soda.

Now add the flour mixture to the date paste one spoonful at a time and mix well.

Transfer the batter into the greased pan and bake for 30 -35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Cool and release cake carefully.
Enjoy in square cut form or pie slices of your choice,