Date and Walnut Cake

Middle-east and Dates are like a match-made-in-heaven. 12 years back I was introduced to this wonderful fruit! Dates are incredibly sweet and healthy alternative to artificial sweeteners.

The benefits of these outstanding fruits include relief from constipation, intestinal disorders, heart problems, anemia, diarrhea, abdominal cancer, and many other conditions. Dates are good for gaining weight also. Rich in several vitamins, minerals and fiber too. These delicious fruits contain oil, calcium, sulfur, iron, potassium, phosphorous, manganese, copper and magnesium which are all beneficial for health. Some health specialists have said that eating one per day is necessary for a balanced and healthy diet.

Looking at all these incredible health benefits, I try and incorporate dates wherever possible in my cooking.

Dates & walnuts make a wonderful pairing option, the sweetness of the dates and earthiness of the walnuts gives an excellent balance. A soft and spongy cake recipe, Dates, Sultanas and chopped walnuts add to the looks and taste of this perfect cake recipe.

Date And Walnut Cake.

 

Ingredients

• Plain flour  (maida) -1 cup
• sunflower oil -1/3 th cup
• sugar – 1/4 th cup
• date pulp – 3/4 th cup
• baking powder – 1 1/2 tsp
• vanilla essence – 1tsp
• cinnamon powder -1 tsp
• eggs  – 2
• salt  –  1/4 tsp
• crushed  walnuts  and black raisins/sultanas   – 1 cup
• milk   – 1/2 cup  ( or much as you require)

Garnishing

• chopped walnut pieces

Black Pitted Dates

Method –

• Take seedless Dates, cut into pieces, put warm water on this, cover and leave for 1 -2  min, strain Dates and make puree.
• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.
• Mix flour, cinnamon powder, salt ,baking powder in a large bowl.
• Mix eggs,sugar,oil,vanilla essence and date puree in a big bowl, beat the mixture 2-3 min in mixer or hand held mixer.
• Add all dry ingredients and beat for another 2-3 mins
• Now add flour dusted Walnuts and Raisins in above mixture.
• Pour  this mixture in oil greased tin dusted with flour.
• Bake the Cake  until the knife or toothpick comes out clean from middle portion of cake.
• Cool for 10 minutes.
• Then remove from tin, garnish with stir fried Date pieces.

Enjoy! 🙂

 

— Until next post

Nisha.

Basbousa – A classic Middle-Eastern dessert

Middle-east has always been close to my palette. Having stayed in UAE and Oman for almost 12 years. Me and my family has been closely associated with Arabic cuisine.

Today I’m going to show you how to prepare a very classic Turkish Dessert – Basbousa. It’s called by various names across different regions including Halva de semolina, Love Cake, Harissa, Namourrah and many more. It is usually a sugary cake made of cooked semolina soaked in a simple syrup.

Basbousa is a versatile dessert. It can be amended as per your taste with various flavouring ingredients such as orange, lemon, coconut, chocolate or even nuts. Read on ! 🙂

Basbousa topped with blanched Almonds

Ingredients

For Semolina Cake

• Semolina – 1 Cup
• Egg  – 1
• Butter – 1/4th cup ( softened )
• Sugar – 1/2 cup ( Finely ground )
• Vanilla essence – 1 tsp
• Baking powder – 1 tsp
• Yoghurt – 1/2 cup
• Salt – 1 pinch
• Yellow food colouring – 1 drop ( optional )

For Sugar Syrup

• Sugar – 1 cup
• Water – 1 cup
• Lemon juice – 1 tsp

For Garnishing

• Blanched Almonds – 11/12

Method

For sugar syrup

• Boil sugar, water and lemon juice until it thickens for about 5-6 minutes.cool the mixture and keep aside.

For semolina cake

• Add butter, sugar, vanilla essence and egg. Beat until its light and fluffy.
• Mix semolina, baking powder and salt. This forms our dry ingredients Add this to the butter mixture made previously.
• Pre-heat the oven at 180 degree
• Grease pan with oil/butter, pour the batter. Decorate the cake batter with halved almonds.
• Bake the batter in the oven for 20-22 minutes.
• Remove the semolina cake from oven make sure that it’s crust is light golden in colour.
• Pour warm sugar syrup and leave the cake for 2 hours, so that the sugar syrup is adequately absorbed by the semolina.
• You can add a couple of drops of rose water or any juice like orange juice in order to bring out more flavours to Basbousa.

Savour this classic Arabic Dessert with a dollop of whipped cream! Enjoy! 🙂

Until next post –

Nisha 🙂