The Weekly Cook Up: Apple, date and pecan cake

This cake is so yummy – it’s moist, full of flavour and dangerously sweet.

It’s a great recipe to get the kids involved – they’ll absolutely love licking the bowl!

The original recipe for this came from a great blog called Root&Blossom. It’s a family recipe of this blogger – and I am soooo glad she shared it! Make sure you check it out.

I made a few changes – I used different apples (because I could not get one Granny Smith apple at the shop!!) and added dates and pecans – simply because I can’t manage to follow any recipe without making a change or two – plus I LOVE dates 🙂 When I make it again, I will wait to get the green variety – I think the tartness of them would be better than the Red Delicious ones I ended up using. Up to you though.

The thing that attracted me to this recipe was not only the combination of flavours – but how simple and easy the directions are! Check it out:

APPLE, DATE AND PECAN CAKE

 

• ½ cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 vanilla bean, deseeded
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp of cinnamon
• 2 cups of sugar
• 4 tbs of hot water
• 1 tsp of salt
• 2 tsp of baking soda
• 5 cups of diced Red Delicious or Granny Smith apples
• 1/2 a cup of pitted dates, diced
• 1 cup of chopped pecans

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Mix the first 9 ingredients, add apples and nuts, mix thoroughly.

Grease a ceramic or glass baking dish with some butter. Pour in the batter and bake for 45 minutes.

 Frosting:

• 1/2 a cup of butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 6 tbs of milk
• 2 ½ cups icing sugar

 Bring the butter, brown sugar, salt and milk to the boil and simmer gently for 2 minutes. Allow to cool for 20 minutes and then add the icing sugar.

Smear on top of the cake and then serve.

 For regular readers of Uforic Food – you’ll know all about my claim to be a shocking baker.

However, news I recently received, and based on the success of my recent baking attempts, means this may not be entirely true!

It turns out the new owner of my former house kept burning everything too and that’s because … the oven was broken! That’s right, no thermostat whatsoever! No wonder everything was burning on the bottom!

I plan to now fearlessly bake like no other woman has baked before! Very inspired!

Thanks again to Root&Blossom for this awesome recipe! Cook it up this weekend and send your family off to work and school with a very yummy snack. They’ll be the envy of everyone!

Lisa~