Weekend Baking - Dates, Prunes and Walnut Bread.

Baked this beautiful bread over the Christmas weekend.
The baking saga started like this. I started browsing through my bookmarked baking recipes on friday morning which continues till sunday evening. There were rolls, buns, cakes, muffins, cookies and what not....I felt like going on a baking spree and start a baking marathon. You might ask me whats the hurry....But this is my last week with the Oven. Yes we are moving to a new house without an oven, and as the move is temperory, we do not want to invest on an oven. Iam going to miss Baking :(.
So I have planned to do as much as baking as possible, atleast try out my most favourite bookmarked recipes, take pictures and save it in my archives for future blogging. Managed to bake some cookies, a cake and this bread by sunday evening, quite satisfied with my work :)
While the cake was ok, this bread turned out great. The original recipe called for just Dates an Nuts. Since I had less quantity of dates, I throwed in some prunes and walnuts.

Recipe source:Joy of Baking
Ingredients:
1/2 cup walnuts
1 cup chopped and pitted dates
1 cup chopped and pitted prunes

1 cup boiling water
1 tsp baking soda

2 cups All purpose flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar
11/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnomon powder ( I used 1 tsp)
1 tsp  vanilla extract

1/2 cup cold butter
1 egg

Method.
Add the dates and prunes to 1 cup of boiling water, along with baking soda and allow it to cool(atleast 1 hr)
Preheat Oven to 180C. Grease and prepare a bread loaf tin for baking.

Beat the egg and vanilla essence in a seperate bowl

In a seperate bowl add the flour, sugar, cinnamon and baking powder. Mix well to combine.

Add the cold , soft butter to the flour mixture and using a electric beater or food processor, mix, till the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs.

Add the fruits along with the liquid.Add the chopped walnuts .Mix well to combine

Pour the mixture to the greased bread tin and bake in the preheated oven for 50 - 60 minutes.

Dates and Walnuts Muffins

Wanted to bake something healthy and filling for our weekend trip to Paris last weekend.When I started browsing, I came across Aparna's post on Dates muffin and I was quite satisfied with the recipe as all the ingredients mentioned were in my pantry and dates sounded more healthy and the combination with walnuts suited my taste.

Muffins are easy to pack and carry too.

I had a type of whole wheat flour with the bran, so I decided to replace the all purpose flour and the wheat germ with WWF and increased the amout of oil by a tablespoon.

The result was a delicious and sweet smelling muffins. The smell of the wwf doesnt seem to bother my toddler and the muffins kept him going during that tiresome weekend.

Ingredients:

2 cup whole wheat flour

¾ cup light brown sugar

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

½ cup dates, deseeded and chopped finely

½ cup walnuts

1 cup milk

4 tbsp oil

1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

Chop the the dates and walnuts into smaller pieces. Set the oven to 200C.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Put all the wet ingredients in another bowl and mix well.

Now pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and fold so that everything is just mixed.

If the batter is over-mixed, the muffins will not be soft and springy in texture.

Spoon the batter into greased muffin cups about 2/3 full.

Bake for about 15 to 2o minutes.Mine baked for 25 mins probably because of the wholewheat.Cool slightly, remove to a rack.

I made 10 as my muffin cups are slightly on the larger side.

Will bake these often from now on, probably will add some orange juice next time as suggested by Madhuram. Iam sending these muffins to her 'Whole Grain Baking - whole wheat ' event.

Eggless Banana Dates and Walnut Muffins

Banana bread being a regular outcome from my kitchen almost every week, I tried to give it a twist by adding some Dates and Walnuts to it. The taste of walnuts cuts through the sweetness of the dates in this recipe.I made this with whole wheat flour ( ground with husk ) which gave these muffins completly different taste and the texture was great too.

Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
2-3 rippened bananas

10 - 15 dates, seeded and chopped

1/2 cup of melted butter or 1/3 cup oil

3/4 cup sugar (I used brown sugar)

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup milk

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

1 tsp vanilla essesnce

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C

Sieve the flour and the baking powder mix thrice.

Mash the banana's and keep aside.

Using an elctric beater or by hand beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the vanilla essence beat well.

At this stage add the milk in three stages alternating with the flour mixtue and stir well to combine.(do not beat).Fold in the mashed bananas, chopped walnuts and dates.

Fill in the muffin cup and bake for 20 - 25 minutes or till knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Note: Fill in the empty muffin cups with little water so that it prevents the top of the muffins from drying out .

Sending this as an entry to the 'Sugar High Friday (SHF)' event which was started by Jennifer of 'Domestic Goddess' hosted by Mansi of the Funs and the food blog.
The theme for this months theme is 'Fruits and Nuts'

Eggless Dates Walnut Cake

Came across this Incredible Date cake from Shilpa's Aayi's receipes. It was very simple and since I had the right ingredients tried the recipe the same day.Can you beleive it!!! I was on a baking mood, and morever we had a trip planned that weekend and thought it would be a nice snack for us. I added lots of walnuts and cut the oil to 1/4 cup, the taste turned out excellent.

Ingredients:


2 cups chopped dates
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chopped walnuts


Method:
Soak the dates in warm milk for couple of hours or until soft. Remove the seeds if it has one.
Chop into pieces and grind to a smooth paste along with sugar. Add in the oil and give a quick pulse to give it good mix.
Sieve the flour and baking soda together. Add the flour little by little to the dates mixture.
Do not over mix the batter.


Butter and flour the 8 inch cake pan.Preheat the oven for 350F
Transfer the batter and bake the cake for 35 - 40 mins or until a tooth pic comes out clean.




Notes: 
You can also add an egg to the recipe and it also turns out great.
The colour of the cake pretty much depends on the colour of the dates