Recipe: Date & Orange Cake (Vegan)

The most popular post on Fuss Free Flavours is my store cupboard bung it all in, mix and bake easy peasy ginger cake.  I make it on a regular basis and have never had it go wrong, or fail to impress.   Because all the ingredients are from the store cupboard you need neither eggs or butter making it frugal as well as vegan, and thus suitable for those with either diary of egg allergies.

My original recipe is now four years old, so it is time for an update (and some better photography) and the current incarnation is a sticky orange and date cake; all the ingredients apart from the orange are from the store cupboard, and the cake is still egg and diary free and vegan.

I used my one of my new baking tins from Mermaid prepped with a thin layer of cake release spray – the cake fell out so easily – almost as if there was a layer of anti gravity.  I cannot recommend them enough and am very pleased not to have to waste future time lining tins.

My dates were ancient and very very dried out so I gave them a soak before using, if you shop more frequently, or have better quality dates than I do then skip this stage.

Recipe: Vegan Orange and Date Cake

(makes 16 x 2” pieces)

100g dried dates, snipped into pieces and covered in boiling water and left to soak
350g Plain Flour
225g Sugar (I use soft dark brown for colour and flavour but any would work)
100g Cooking oil (Sunflower or rape/canola)
Zest one large orange, finely grated
1tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch salt
About 60g golden syrup

Drain the dates, reserving the soaking water, make the volume of the date water up to 225ml.  Place all the ingredients into a bowl or your stand mixer and whizz until you have a smooth golden brown batter. Pour into 8” square pan lined with greaseproof paper (if needed) and bake at GM4/180C for about 25 – 30 mins until risen and a cocktail stick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Cut into squares and dust with icing sugar.

This keeps well for at least a week in an airtight tin.

This post is sponsored by Whitworths who are running a series of twitter competitions this month to win a bag of sugars, or a stand mixer.  This cake in all its variations certainly is my favourite home bake!

How to enter

1. Follow @WhitworthsSugar
2. Each week @WhitworthsSugar will ask their Twitter fans a different baking related question, all you have to do to enter is tweet your answer with the well-themed hash tag.

16^th – 22^nd February

We all love home baked goods, but what’s your favourite? Tweet using #LoveHomeBaking’

23^rd – 28^th February

Imagine being stranded on a dessert island, you’ve got your luxury items, perhaps a bed, a good playlist and a note pad, but what baked treat would you take with you if you could take only one? Tweet using the hash tag #DessertIslandBake

Each Friday one lucky person will be chosen at random to win a Whitworths goody bag (3 in total), this winner will be chosen from the previous week’s entries, the requirements are that

1. They are following @WhitworthsSugar
2. They have used the correct hash tag for that week (see above).

As this does not contain eggs or butter and is relatively frugal I am sending this to Credit Crunch Munch hosted by me and Camilla which is over on Camilla’s site this month.

And to Alphabakes where the letter is E and this cake is Egg free!

 Although sponsored, recipe, words and photos are my own. Thank you to Mermaid for my bakeware.