Sunday, December 12, 2010

Eggless Almond Date Cake

Sometime back, I had made a vegan coconut cake using a recipe from the book Veganomicon. It came out so good that I swore I would make it again just to blog at least. The day I made it, I was taking it to work and had no time to take pictures. When I was thinking of making the same cake to take to someone's house, all of a sudden I got this crazy idea of adapting that to make almond and date cake with cardamom flavor. I followed the steps of making almond milk but used more dates and made a thick puree without filtering it and proceeded with very minimal changes. This cake is so good that if someone eats it, they will definitely go for the second slice and the third and so on.

Ingredients:
Almonds - 1 cup (I didn't remove the skin but you could if you want a lighter color cake)
Dates - pitted 15 (You could omit this and increase sugar by about 1/4 - 1/3 cup)
All purpose flour - 3 cups
Salt - 1 tsp
Baking powder - 2 tsp
Baking Soda - 1 tsp
Cardamom - 10 pods crushed or about 1 1/2 tsp powder
Sugar - 1 1/2 cups
Vegetable or Canola Oil - 2/3 cup

For glaze and garnish: (adapted from a glaze recipe in cake mix doctor book)
Milk - 2 TBSP (You could heavy cream. I didn't have any)
Sugar - 3 TBSP
Brown Sugar - 2 TBSP
Almond extract - 1/2 tsp
Butter - 2 TBSP
Sliced almonds - 3 - 4 TBSP (You might not need all of it)

Method:
Soak almond and dates in warm water to cover them for about 4 hours. Grind into a smooth paste in a blender. Use enough water so that the resultant liquid/puree is 2 1/4 cups.
Preheat the oven to 350 F. I did mine at 325 F since I was using a dark nonstick pan. Grease and flour the pan and set aside. In a bowl whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cardamom powder. In another bowl whisk together the date and almond puree with oil. Dump the dry ingredients to the wet and stir to combine. Do not over mix. Pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.


Cool on the wire rack in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning it on to the wire rack to cool completely. When completely cool, glaze or just sprinkle with powdered sugar.

To make the glaze:
In a sauce pan, stir sugar, brown sugar, milk, butter till dissolved stirring constantly. Let it boil for about 1 minute stirring often. Turn off the heat and add almond extract. Let it sit for about 5 minutes before pouring on to the cake. You can leave it at this or sprinkle some sliced almonds on the top.

Since I could not slice the cake to take a picture, I took part of the batter and baked it in a mini loaf pan.

Enjoy. Pin It

39 comments:

  1. looks awesome and very tempting...nice clicks...

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  2. wonderful pics and decadent cake with my fav nut....looks simply gorgeous

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  3. Wat a delectable and gorgeous looking cake..

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  4. yummy cake...bookmarked..but i am currently on a 'no sugar' resolve..but this cake is trying to break my resolve!!

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  5. Looks yummy, and wonderful that you adapted a recipe!

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  6. Iam bookmarking it!!Love baking eggless cakes

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  7. very nice recipe champa.
    I baked whole wheat bread following your suggestion of using 1 tbsp gluten for every one cup of flour.. The bread came out so well..
    When will you be posting the recipe for vegan coconut cake? :-)
    Also, do you have a good recipe for vegan vanilla cake that does not use vegan butter but oil?

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  8. looks so good...I bake similar kind some time but no cardamoms.....i guess I've to try cardamoms next time I bake...I'm sure must be very nice aroma......

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  9. Thanks everyone for taking time to leave a comment. I really appreciate it.

    Priya,
    I will post the coconut cake recipe soon. This one is almost a vegan cake if not for the glaze. I can think of a way to make a vanilla cake using oil which is vegan. But do you get applesauce in India or do you have to make it yourself? I know of a recipe that I can tweak to make a vegan vanilla cake but that uses applesauce.

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  10. beautiful cake , and a great recipe.

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  11. Ground almonds in a cake sounds delicious, have not eaten a cake with dates though. I will surely try this one sometime Champa..

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  12. yummy and delicious cake....lovely!!

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  13. fantastic! the pics is just OMG good!

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  14. Looks so darned good! What is it about a bundt cake that is always so homey and comfy? ; }

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  15. Wow! Looks sooo delicious and i want to have it now :)

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  16. Looks delicious !!First time to your blog,loved it .I'm your new follower !!
    http://essence-de-life.blogspot.com/

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  17. Yum, yum and YUM!
    I think i should try atleast this one soon, as there is no egg and i dont have to worry when to bake it and so on....
    Nice recipe...

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  18. Hi Champa,
    I baked this cake sans the glaze yesterday for my husband's b'day. This is one of the best cake's I have baked ever. My visiting sister felt it tasted more like appam, vella cheedai, may be due to the addition of cardomoms, nevertheless, she had 3 pieces at a stretch. :-) May be next time, I might reduce the number of cardomoms. The texture was perfect, not crumbly and very easy to cut pieces and above all it was delicious..Thanks a lot for this recipe..I am yet to try your vegan vanilla cakes. :-)

    Happy holidays to you and your family..

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  19. Priya,
    Thanks for the feedback. Yes, the cardamom flavor is very strong which suits Indian taste buds very well. Do let me know how the other one turned out and I have updated that post with some modifications if you want to look at.

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  20. hey I baked this cake with no glaze but just a drizzle of agave nectar and the cake was more than perfect! I reduced sugar a little and added more dates and reduced cardamom also and took it to a party! The reaction was unbelievable!! And to top it all my almost 9 yr old gave me a compliment which is more than I could ask for !! Thanks for the recipe.

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  21. Harini,
    You are welcome. I am glad everyone liked it and I can imagine how wonderful you must've felt when your kid admired your work. Thanks for giving me the feedback.

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  22. hi Champa:

    I am gonna try this out using a newly bought bundt cake pan (yes, have always cooked in a cake tin / loaf tin).. Quite nervous as I have never used a silicon bundt pan.. Any advice wrt temp I need to note while using a silicon type pan? Also, do let me know how I can halve the quantity as I am trying this out for the first time? What would be the proportions? Any pointers on this would be great- Pl do drop me a line..

    Thanks

    Kalyani

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  23. Kalyani,
    First of all, thanks for the comment. You can use silicon bundt pan the way we use normal pan. No temperature adjustment needed. However, don't keep the pan on a cookie sheet. You need the heat to go through the central tube also. Keep it on the oven rack directly. If you half the recipe, you cannot really use a bundt pan unless you have a 6 cup bundt pan. You can halve the recipe and bake it as a loaf cake. To half, just half everything. Works just fine. Good luck and do let me know about your trial.

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  24. when you mix the dry ingredients to the wet or vice a versa do you mix with the spatula or whisk it with beater. secondly what is the ideal mixing time apart from no lumps?as in cake boxes it says 3minutes etc

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  25. when you mix dry ingredients to the wet or in some recipes wet to dry do you mix with spatula or whisk it with beater?
    how long do you whisk like one minute two minutes apart from no lumps as it says in cake box mix three minutes or some.

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  26. Anonymous,
    If I have specified that I used a beater, then it is a beater. Most of the vegan or eggless recipes where there is no creaming of butter and sugar do not need the electric mixer. Whisking with a whisk in the initial stages and then folding with a spatula works fine. The cake mixes say that since they have already mixed in the shortening and want you to airate the batter. It depends on each recipe.

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  27. I baked the caked yestetday yum yum yummy.I did decrease the cardomon in it.

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  28. can you post some recipe of cheese cake eggless

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  29. Tara,
    Thanks for the feedback. Sure I will but will take time since no one will eat cheesecake at home. I have to have a gathering to make it.

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  30. Champa, when a recipe calls for the batter to be mixed without overmixing, does it always go that its OK for some lumps in the batter?

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  31. Suma,
    It is okay to have lumps in the batter in case of quick breads and muffins. Not in the cake. When I say do not overmix, it is to prevent gluten from forming. In case of a cake which uses butter or shortening, initial creaming of butter and sugar is to aerate and almost dissolve the sugar. But in case of vegan or eggless cake which use oil, you are mixing all of the dry ingredients and wet together. Overmixing will make the end product hard.

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  32. Hello Champa,
    This cake was just amazing, I'm kind off addicted to the dates,almond and cardamom combo. I've baked it thrice so far and its sure keeper though my cake is a little crumbly due to whole wheat pastry flour but I dont care :p... thank you so much!!

    Regards,
    Madhu

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  33. I loved this cake too, Champa! Thank you! Will post it on my blog sometime...

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  34. Almond cake is one my favorites and I would love to try such tasty cakes at home. Appreciate this post.
    Get help here

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