spiced date loaf

spiced date loaf

• 2 Mar 2025

If you know me, then you know I'm a fan of simple fruit, citrus or nut forward cakes. You can also add dates to that list of cake flavours, so when I saw this easy spiced date loaf in Julia Busuttil Nishimura's book, Good Cooking Everyday, I bookmarked it straight away.

It's one of those cakes you can make with store cupboard ingredients and although I did splash out and buy some medjool dates, I don't think that was necessary. Regular dried dates would work just as well. 

I did change the method a little but otherwise this is a pretty faithful version of Julia's recipe just reduced to fit into my smaller tin. Here's the recipe for you which makes a small, 18 x 10 cm loaf cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. If you'd like to make a larger loaf cake, then just increase all the ingredients by a third. The bake time will stay the same.

Spiced Date Loaf 

Ingredients

100g pitted dates
heaped ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
60mls boiling water
165g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
heaped ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
pinch ground nutmeg 
½ tsp vanilla extract 

60mls light-flavoured extra-virgin olive oil or neutral vegetable oil
2 eggs
65g brown sugar
40 g caster sugar
pinch of sea salt 
60mls buttermilk or full fat yoghurt

To serve
salted butter

Method
Preheat the oven to 190°C conventional. Grease and line the base and sides of a 18 x 10 cm loaf tin with baking paper.

Place the dates and bicarbonate of soda in a heatproof bowl and cover with the boiling water. Sit for 10 minutes, then mash well with a fork. 

Sift the dry ingredients into a small bowl and add the vanilla extract to the oil and set aside.

Place the eggs, sugars and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on a high speed for 4-5 minutes or until pale and voluminous. Reduce the speed to medium and stream in the oil until combined. 

Reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients in thirds alternating with the buttermilk and mashed dates and mix until just combined.

Scrape the batter into the tin and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out almost clean when tested (a few crumbs are fine). Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then transfer the cake to a wire rack to cool completely.

To serve, slice the loaf then slather with salted butter.

I shared this cake with the neighbours and kept a good slab of cake for myself. I enjoyed my slices of cake, served just as you see it, slathered with butter, and accompanied by a nice strong cup of tea.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen. 

Bye for now,

Jillian