Egg less Date Cake

This cake has happy memories....of a recent variety....
Of my favourite neighbour...
Of a lady who has boundless energy...
and a vast repertoire of yummy recipes.......
Mrs Kusum Veerinder Singh....
Mrs Veeru to all those of Itarana ,Alwar ,and St Anselm's School....
Been a long time ,wanting to call and chat.....but I'm tooo lazy to pick up the phone and explain why I haven't made the effort earlier....
Sometimes I think I'm happier hearing the voices in my head...
Weird!
Well..to come back to cakes...we were regularly fed  ginormous pieces of this cake and yes as far as I can remember...This one does justice to Mrs Veeru....
So now I promise myself that I will locate her number and give her a long overdue call..
The cake warm always looked like this..

but that is only because it was just out of the oven........HOT!
All those of you who took her recipe and lost it..and to those who have never met her....
Make this and you'll never forget the taste...
For the

Egg less Date Cake....
you need

200 gms of dates....with or without seeds
4 cups plain flour
1 3/4 cups of warm milk
1 1/2 cups of sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cups refined vegetable oil
a pinch of baking powder
4 tsp of sugar (to make the caramel)

For those of you who have cups of a variety of sizes and shapes...go for the standard Indian Chai Mug of approximately 200mils..

grease and flour a square tin 20 by 20 cm....well and sprinkle a little sugar on the base of the tin like so ..

now de-seed and chop the dates into small"ish"pieces..

and add to the warm milk in a large bowl...

In the meanwhile make the caramel...the 4 tsp of sugar in a pan....melting and almost fusing with water and boiling away to a honey like consistency...For reference...I also made caramel for my Country Style Rustic Two-Tone Bread....
http://baketitude.blogspot.com/2011/08/country-style-rustic-two-tone-bread.html
click on the above link to see the details...I just doubled the sugar here...

We need only about 2 -3 tbsp of it ....straight of the fire into the milk and dates mixture

Stir it in to get a spectacular colour...

Start your oven to preheat to 180C and sift the baking soda and flour and salt three times now

Now into the wet mix just add in the sugar

and the oil

Don't use to much muscle power....just a couple of turns should do it....
A third at a time add in the flour and mix in one direction...

This batter is THICK! so it will not pour....you need to spoon it into the  tin

and your oven should be beeping by now...so just do it...pop it in and wait for 35-40 Min's...
Be sure to check with a skewer ,if it seems a little underdone reduce the oven temperature to 170C and bake till done ....the skewer will come clean in 8-10 Min's.

Bring it out and run a knife around the edges...wait a minute or 5 ...depending on how strongly you can resist the aroma...

Warm or cold ...this tasted AWESOME!!!
If you do want to ,you can add walnuts...about half a cup but I always feel that they compete with the dates for dominating the flavour...Dates ,sweet things they are....I want to let them shine.....they have such a delicate,warm and honey like  flavour.
This is one cake I would advise not to spice..Nutmeg is optional...but it almost changes the flavour of the dates.....I always feel...
Keep it simple , silly!

So this was going,going,gone!
Ritu Sharma...this was for you...I hope you and your family loved the cake...and that you will venture away from chocolate cakes into trying out more and more stuff in your new oven.

For comments and queries ...e-mail me.

So what are you baking today???