Where are you Jamie Oliver?

Having some free time between between the floors drying and the laundry I decided to bake another date and walnut cake.  Dates are cheap and plentiful in Riyadh,and whilst I don’t particularly like to eat them individually, I do like a date loaf.  After getting the mixture right it was popped into the oven on 340F for 45 minutes.  Last time I baked the loaf at 350F and it turned out rock hard on the outside.  After 45 minutes I removed the cake from the oven and stuck a needle in the middle to see if it was done.  It wasn’t!  The problem was the outside was cooked, and would get overcooked if I kept baking it in the tin.  My clever idea was to take the cake out of the baking tin and place it back in the oven minus the tin.  That way the tin wouldn’t overcook the outside.

Not a good decision as the “guts” fell out of the middle of the cake when attempting to remove it from the tin.  Back into the oven it went complete with tin.

I can see this is going to be very religious cake.  One of the most holy I’ve baked thus far!

Eventually the middle rose and the end result was a date loaf that is very hard on the outside and rather soft on the inside.  I guess that means “on average” it’s a good cake.  Well I’ll eat it……