‘The night before Christmas brings sweet date cake, wrapping the last of gifts & a whole lot of Christmas movies under the blanket’

Inspired by the date market in Abu Dhabi & the festive feeling of dates, I thought it was time to join in on the ride and make a juicy date cake. This so called- coffee cake is the opposite of dry & it has a wonderful naturally sweet flavour to it from the Majdool dates. The cake has a festive backdrop to it as the dates are cooked in glögi (mulled wine) to bring out those Christmas spices. It is optional to garnish a dry cake, but I just love lots of figs over Christmas, so I think they work beautifully together.

Ingredients

• 10-12 large dates (pits removed)
• 2-3 dl glögi (mulled wine) apple juice/strong coffee is a good substitute
• 1dl sugar
• 200g butter (room temperature)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
• 1teaspoon baking soda
• 3 1/2 dl flour
• cake tray preparation: 1 tablespoon butter/ about 1 tablespoon breadcrumbs
• Garnish: figs & icing sugar

Directions

Add the seedless dates & glögi to a saucepan and bring to gentle boil. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring once in a while. With a handheld blender, blitz the dates into a mush if needed.

Add the sugar and butter to the blended dates. Then beat in the eggs along with the dry ingredients through a sieve. Mix well.

Pour the batter into a cake tin that is well brushed with butter and all the sides dusted with breadcrumbs.

Bake for an hour or a bit less in 160 degrees celsius. Let it completely cool before removing from the cake tin. This is optional to garnish, but I added some figs and a dusting of icing sugar.