Another one made after my brush with the date bars (of which I made two batches because they were very nice) and a desire to experiment further with the delicious toffee-ness of the flavour they give to bakes. Again, I forgot to photograph my efforts here, mainly because I baked it to take to Devon to visit Joe's family, so it was baked and packaged in a bit of a frenzy. I do, however, have some leftovers in the freezer (some of which I ate this week), so I'll try to add a photo when they come out.
This was quite a straightforward bake, but one of the things I'm learning about using dates (and subsequently, dried apricots) is that they often need a bit of cooking in a pan with water to make them a bit squidgy and release their flavour. So that needed doing, and then cooling, before assembling the remaining cake ingredients. It took 1 hour and 10 minutes to bake at quite a low temperature, and smelt lovely. I didn't bother with the icing (lemon and icing sugar, with walnuts on top) because of the time and travel constraints. I expect it would've made it a little bit more palatable to those who aren't huge lovers of the strong cinnamon flavour and the dark muscovado sugar in the cake.
Baker's verdict: quite straightforward to make; was tasty enough but really heavy. Would work better as a dessert with custard than as a cake for afternoon tea.
Husband rating: 5/10 - feel bad giving that harsh score: it's more that it wasn't to my taste because of the cinnamon flavour but if something says it's walnut and date, you expect that to be the main thing and I didn't get any of them.
This was quite a straightforward bake, but one of the things I'm learning about using dates (and subsequently, dried apricots) is that they often need a bit of cooking in a pan with water to make them a bit squidgy and release their flavour. So that needed doing, and then cooling, before assembling the remaining cake ingredients. It took 1 hour and 10 minutes to bake at quite a low temperature, and smelt lovely. I didn't bother with the icing (lemon and icing sugar, with walnuts on top) because of the time and travel constraints. I expect it would've made it a little bit more palatable to those who aren't huge lovers of the strong cinnamon flavour and the dark muscovado sugar in the cake.
Baker's verdict: quite straightforward to make; was tasty enough but really heavy. Would work better as a dessert with custard than as a cake for afternoon tea.
Husband rating: 5/10 - feel bad giving that harsh score: it's more that it wasn't to my taste because of the cinnamon flavour but if something says it's walnut and date, you expect that to be the main thing and I didn't get any of them.
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