Cake # 8 Date & Spice Loaf

On to cake number eight, the Date & Spice Loaf cake, and another adventurous weekend with "The Children". Ted had all four of his wisdom teeth surgically removed yesterday, and boy was he in pain. The Novocain wore off in the middle of the the surgery on his last tooth, and by the time I got home from work Ted's mouth looked like a chipmunk full of blood. It was nasty. So my night was busy taking care of two toothless babies. That is why I was surprised when Ted wanted to go out to the store to get the ingredients for my next cake. Apparently, Hydrocodone is a powerful pain killer. Only twenty minutes after taking his drugs (as he likes to call them), Ted was feeling F-I-N-E. He was literally chasing me around the house asking me to kiss him. Because, as he said, "it would be like kissing a new man! How it exciting, I have four less teeth!" On top of that every so often he would ask me to stick a flashlight in his mouth so he could admire his sutures. So against my better judgment, I let Ted go to the store, really it was a toss up between my sanity and his safety - and in the end I realized that Ted was not safe acting the way he was around me either, I would have probably hurt him, so to the store he went.

While he was at the store getting one of the main ingredients for this recipe, dates, I suddenly realized that I wasn't exactly sure what a date was. I had seen one before, but I had never tasted one, and I was only partly sure that they were a fruit. So I did what any respectable baker would do, I Googled it. Turns out dates are a fruit that come from a date palm tree that is native to the Middle East and Northern Africa. When Ted came home with the dates, I immediately popped one in my mouth to see what it would taste like, because after all, as Top Chef Tom Colicchio would say, "You have to know your ingredients!" It was amazing! A sticky, juicy mixture of raisin and grape flavor with a hint of some sort of nuttiness. I don't know why I haven't eaten these  before, but that is going to change. Eating dates was one thing, but chopping them into coarse, tiny pieces, was something completely different. They were so sticky, that the chopping process took longer than the whole baking process. Besides dates this cake also called for: butter, whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, apple pie spice, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

While the loaf "cake" was baking my house smelled like Christmas. Although it has been unseasonably warm, and it is almost March, all I could think of this morning was Christmas cookies. The apple pie spice mixture made my house smell like cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. The smell wasn't the only pleasantry about this cake, visually it looked beautiful, and very hearty.

The book's verison:

My version pre-slice:

Fortunately, this cake tasted as great as it looked. Although Ted had to eat around the dates, sticky dates do not make for good food after the removal of four teeth, he still said, "This was your best cake so far!" Now, Ted is a bit bias, he loves me too much and says that about all of the cakes I make, plus he loves food even more. However, I can attest that this cake is good. It tastes almost like a oatmeal wheat cookie with nuts. I can't explain it, but it tastes amazing.

Here is the loaf sliced:

Next week we are baking a lemon and fig bar, I am super excited about this cake because I love lemon, the sour the better!

Happy Baking.