What is it about runners and cake? I was never much of a lover of cake but I have eaten more since I started running than I did in my entire life before running. Combine this with my fondness for trying out recipes that are simple but offer an interesting mix of flavours, here comes Tamarind Date Cake.
This cake is surprisingly light and full of flavour. I got some excellent feedback from my running group at our biannual #cakefest – so give it a try.
Now for the cardamom seeds – if you have a mortar and pestle, use it. It’s not a lot of effort and well worth it for the flavour. If not, use just a small sprinkling of the powdered stuff.
And here’s how you do it…
200g chopped dates
50g tamarind paste
250g unsalted butter
150g dark muscovado sugar
2 large eggs
275g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g shelled walnuts, roughly chopped
Icing
150g icing sugar
The seeds from 6-8 cardamom pods, finely ground
Juice of ½ lemon
- Line the base and sides of a deep, 18cm cake tin with nonstick baking paper.
- Heat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-assisted)/350ºF/gas mark 4.
- Put the choppped dates, tamarind paste and 300ml water in a pan and bring to a boil. Boil for a minute, remove from the heat, add the butter, and set aside for 10 minutes to cool.
- Add the brown sugar, stir, then beat in the eggs until smooth. Beat in the flour and bicarb, then stir in the walnuts. You will find once you’ve added the bicarb, the mixture will froth up a little – this is to be expected.
- Spoon the cake mix into the tin and bake for about an hour. Less if you put in two smaller tins as I did. You’ll know it’s cooked by poking it with a skewer and it comes out of the centre clean.
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
- When cold, make a thick, smooth icing with the icing sugar, cardamom, juice and a little water, if needed, and spoon over the cake so it dribbles down the sides.
- Let the icing set and then eat!
Adapted from Dan Lepard‘s Tamarind Date Cake
