Recipe: Egg-Free Date Cake
This Egg-Free Date Cake is moist, flavourful, full of nuts and dried fruits, wheat cake. Makes an excellent teatime, breakfast or picnic cake. No icing or frosting required as it tastes so good on its own. Best part is that once you’ve got all the ingredients, the cake is so easy to make and bake.
Memories
Being away from family is not very nice. Most of my family live either in India, UK, US, Europe, Dubai, Canada or Nairobi. That means I hardly ever get the opportunity to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, festivals with them. Though a disheartening reality, I tend to make the occasions special by making something sweet to celebrate with my hubby. It sometimes results in something sweet within a few days or a week! However, I just make the dish and then share it with friends, neighbours , guests and Julius our house help. He loves desserts, cakes, Indian sweets. So, for my dear brother and my sister in law’s anniversary I made this special egg-free date cake.
Updated
I got the opportunity to update this cake recipe. Our new friends in Sherbrooke do not consume eggs. This makes it quite difficult for them to get ready made egg free cakes in Sherbrooke or Montreal. Unless, of course they search for a vegan outlet. We were invited to their place for dinner and I baked this cake for them. This gave me the opportunity to update the photos and also make a video.
I published this post on 8th August 2012. Updating it on 7th April 2023.
What did I Change In This Recipe Over Time?
Firstly, I swapped the plain flour with wheat flour.
Secondly, I replaced the white sugar with powdered jaggery or brown sugar, depending what I have at the time of baking.
Thirdly, as I use wheat flour, the amount of liquid required for the cake increases. Wheat flour tends to absorb more liquid than plain flour.
Lastly, I add more nuts and dried fruit mixture than before. I have increased it from ½ cup to 1 cup.
Some More Egg-Free Cake/Muffin Recipes
Ingredients Required For Egg-Free Date Cake
Dates – preferably soft ones. Remove the seeds. When measuring the pitted dates in a cup, press them down gently and not too packed.
Milk – I use normal 2% fat milk. Milk is required to cook the dates into a paste and also to add to the cake batter.
Wheat Flour – I prefer using wheat flour, the normal type of atta we buy for parathas and roti.
Baking Soda – as the raising agent.
Salt – to balance the sweetness.
Sweetener – use either brown sugar or powdered jaggery. I use ¼ cup. If you prefer a more sweeter cake then use ⅓ cup.
Plain Yogurt – dahi. Must be thick and not watery. Do not use sour yogurt.
Fat – use either any odourless oil of your choice or melted butter. I prefer to use butter as it makes the cake crumb more softer.
Dried Fruits, Nuts and Seeds – use any that you prefer. Can use cashew nuts, almonds, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, etc. Add raisins, chopped apricot, dried berries, dried pineapple, mango, etc. Can add seeds e.g. pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, poppy, chia, flax seeds. Just make sure whichever nuts, fruits and seeds you use the total mix should be only 1 cup.
Orange Zest – to add flavour to the cake. Can replace it with other flavours like vanilla, lemon zest, etc.
Orange Juice – can ad half quantity milk and half quantity fresh orange juice if you want to.
Spices – add any spices of your choice. I used cinnamon, clove and nutmeg powders.
Watch How To Make Egg-Free Date Cake
EGG-FREE DATE CAKE
Ingredients
- 1 cup dates without the seeds press down gently but not too tightly to measure
- 1 cup milk
- ¼ cup milk or orange juice
- 1 cup wheat flour
- 1 tsp soda bicarbonate baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ -1/3 cup jaggery powder/brown sugar
- ¼ cup plain yogurt thick
- ¼ cup butter melted
- 1/2 cup mixed nuts chopped
- ½ cup dried fruits raisins, apricots, dried berries, etc
- 1 tsp orange rind grated
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1/4 tsp clove powder
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg powder
- extra butter for greasing the tin
- extra flour for dusting the tin
Instructions
- Put the dates and 1 cup milk in a pan. Heat it over medium flame. Mix frequently till it becomes a paste. Let the mixture cool before using it.
- Preheat the oven at 180°C. Grease a loaf tin 9" by 4" with butter and add about a tbsp of flour. Coat the tin with the flour and tap out any extra. Or line the tin with parchment paper.
- Sieve flour, soda bicarbonate, salt and spices together.
- Add the nuts, dried fruits,seeds and orange peel to the flour and mix it well.
- To the cooled date mixture add melted butter, yogurt, ¼ cup milk or orange juice and sugar. Mix it well using a hand blender or whisk.
- Add the flour mixture to the date mixture.
- Mix gently just enough to coat the flour. Do not over mix.
- Pour the batter into the prepared tin.
- Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes or until the top is golden brown.
- To check if its done, insert a fork or toothpick into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, it is done. If not, lower the temp to 150°C and bake for a further 5 minutes.
- Remove the tin from the oven. Let the cake rest in the tin for 5 minutes.
- Gently remove the cake from the tin and let it cool on a wire rack.
Notes
- Make sure the total amount of nuts, dried fruits and seeds measure to 1 cup and not more.
- Can use vanilla extract instead of orange rind.
- Do not grate the white part of the orange rind as it will make the cake bitter.
- Can use a round or square tin instead of a loaf tin. Check the cake after 25 minutes.
- Whenever you bake an eggless cake, leave it in the tin for 5 to 10 minutes to avoid breaking it.
- Serve the cake on its own with some tea or coffee. Can also enjoy it with some ice cream, whipped fresh cream or custard.
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A Little Request:
If you do try this recipe then please either
- add a comment below,
- send a picture to my email mayuri.ajay.patel62@gmail.com
- tag me as #mayuri_jikoni on Instagram
- or tag me on Twitter as #Mayuri1962
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