Free From Friday - Date & Cinnamon Cake (Egg Free)

Salam Alaikum sisters & Hi to all my readers,

This delicious date and cinnamon cake is anything but dry, which is what most of us associate with egg free cakes/biscuits.

The dates are the secret in this cake as they add sticky sweetness, which also means the cake remains moist and rest assured it won't be around long enough to dry out. 

The pink fondant was purely to give it a bit of umph! even the best tasting cake can look unappealing being one shade of brown! Next time i make this tasty treat i won't be adding the fondant unless a request comes from dh or son for blue or green fondant lol because seriously the flavour speaks for itself.

Recipe adapted from Treat & Trick
Makes: 1 x 20cm round cake
which is around 6-10 servings depending on how you ration sweet goods in your household

Ingredients
1.5 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 cup water
1 cap full of rose water (optional)
60g  butter
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup chopped dry dates
1 tsp cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat oven 180C/160C (Fan)/350F/Gas Mark 4, grease and flour a 20cm spring form baking pan.
2. Sieve flour, baking powder and cinnamon together in a medium size bowl
3. Place water, butter and dates in a saucepan. Heat the mixture on medium heat until butter has melted. Turn off heat then add rose water, if using.
4. Stir in brown sugar, stir well until it dissolves, while still warm mix in the rest of your dry ingredients from step 2, combine until well incorporated.
5. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for 22-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
6. Let sit in the pan for 10-20 minutes, transfer onto rack to cool

If you want to go ahead and decorate your cake as i did, you will need

250-300grams fondant icing sugar
10-15ml cold water
X amount of food colouring OPTIONAL (depends what shade you want to achieve and type of colouring your using, i used a colour paste so a little bit went a loooong bright way!)
Handful of flaked almond (can toast these but i forgot) to scatter on top of the fondant

1. Place fondat icing sugar in a pan with 10ml water along with food colouring (go steady, remember you can always add more but you can't take away!)
2. Turn on heat to low and stir together until the icing is a thick consistency that still runs off the spoon.
3. Pour onto the center of your cake and watch as the icing glides over and sometimes down the sides of your cake.
4. Whilst the fondant hasn't set scatter flaked almonds on top.

Enjoy!