Date Honey Nut Cake – a moist, tender cake bursting with flavor. This super easy quick bread cake is lovely served with tea or coffee. It’s also a nice change from standard honey cake – perfect for Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, or any holiday!
When I received a batch of organic dates from a kibbutz in Israel, I found myself wondering what to do with them. These sweet, luscious dates on the vine were perfect for snacking, but how else could I get creative with them? Date nut cake was an obvious choice, but I wanted to do something a little different. With Rosh Hashanah coming up, my mind wandered to honey cake. The thought of sweetening date nut cake with honey seemed like just the ticket.
Voila! The Date Honey Nut Cake was born. This tasty loaf cake is a unique take on a traditional Rosh Hashanah honey cake. Dates are actually a symbolic food for Rosh Hashanah, so it’s a great choice for the holiday. In Hebrew, a date is called a “tamar,” which is related to the word “tam” (meaning “to end”) and the word “sheyitamu” (meaning “to be consumed”). Dates are eaten in the hopes that our enemies will be consumed. They also happen to be naturally sweet, which is another good reason to eat them for Rosh Hashanah (as we hope for a sweet new year). And here’s another fun fact– biblical scholars believe that the honey repeatedly mentioned in the Torah likely came from dates (and other fruits), not bees. Yet another good reason to eat dates for Rosh Hashanah!
So, what better way to enjoy dates than in a sweet, delicious honey cake? The dates provide lots of moisture, which makes this a convenient make-ahead dessert—the cake will not dry out if you make it a day or two before the holiday begins. The walnuts add some nice texture and crunch. It’s naturally dairy free, but can be topped with cream cheese frosting for extra decadence (if you’re not worried about keeping it parve).
I hope this cake ends up on your holiday table. It will definitely be on mine.
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Date Honey Nut Cake
Ingredients
- 6 ounces whole dates (3/4 cup)
- 1 cup cake flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Pinch nutmeg
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil (I use canola)
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
- Nonstick cooking spray
NOTES
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Place dates into a bowl and cover them with very hot water. Let the dates soak while you prepare the cake batter.
- In a large mixing bowl, sift together cake flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg.
- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together vegetable oil, brown sugar, honey, eggs, and vanilla.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir till a thick batter forms.
- Drain water from the dates. Pit the dates, then chop the fruit into small chunks.
- Fold the walnuts and date chunks into the batter.
- Generously grease your loaf pan with cooking spray. Pour batter into loaf pan.
- Place loaf pan in preheated oven. Bake cake for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and set on a wire rack to cool.
Nutrition
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I liked this so much that I ate almost half the loaf before it had cooled! Yeah, it’s THAT good! The top of mine was super dark, almost burned but it actually does not negatively affect the taste in any way. Super moist and easy to make. I also used light brown sugar as that was all I had on hand. I will most assuredly make this again.. This would a nice present also. ❤✌
I made this for the first time and honestly this recipe is OUTSTANDING! Please add this to your favorites because it is a hit!
This cake was super moist and delicious, I’m keeping this recipe and making it again this weekend. Thank you for a great recipe.
What a delicious tasting cake! I did substitute 1 stick of Butter for the oil, plus added 3 tablespoons of oil . it was moist and super flavorful thank you for the delicious recipe!
This sounds fantastic! Thanks for sharing! Any idea how to adjust the liquid ingredients if omitting the walnuts (I assume they are a drying agent)?
Hi Emily, it shouldn’t need to be adjusted – just omit them. 🙂
Very yummy! A keeper.
Made this today and it was a total failure. And sadly I even doubled so I could have one for company and one for us. It COMPLETELY fell apart. Not even sliceable. I am an experienced baker and could tell the batter was too thin/liquidy going in to the pan but just crossed my fingers…disappointing. I kept checking and checking to make sure I got the amounts right since I’d doubled, and I did. The recipe is not right. Perhaps the amount of flour is supposed to be 2 cups?
Hi Joanna, I’m so sorry to hear that this didn’t work out for you! Just for future reference, I never double baked recipes (even quick breads) without first checking with the recipe creator, as you can really get mixed results. In this case, this recipe has been posted for years and has a lot of fantastic reviews (including some very recent ones below)… so I can only think that doubling the recipe caused your issue. You are right, it is a wet batter, but that is so the cake bakes up very moist. I do have similar recipes with more flour, but this one was developed to provide a very moist cake texture. You could add more flour (or almond flour if you like) – up to 3/4 cup more, I would think – but the end texture will be different. Not bad, just different.
This cake is super delicious. I made it many times. All my family loved it. Thank you very much for sharing your recipe.
Wow. Really good. I would like to make a few to give as gifts – can this be doubled?
I made this, this morning & it is soooo good! It’s exactly what I was looking for. It’s definitely restaurant worthy & the house smelled so good! My husband loved it! I’ll be making it again & again!
I was wondering if you can substitute almond fine flour for cake flour. make it keto., What do you think?
You can do a combination of almond flour and cake flour – 3/4 almond flour, 1/4 cake flour. Using all almond flour may render it too crumbly.