Making this breakfast pocket is simple, and you can customize the filling by using other ingredients, such as bacon, eggs, and cheese or sausage and egg whites with Gouda.
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr 30 mins |
| Additional Time: | 10 mins |
| Total Time: | 2 hrs 10 mins |
| Servings: | 16 |
| Yield: | 1 10-inch tube pan |
Ingredients
- 2 pounds dates, pitted and chopped
- 2 pounds English walnuts, coarsely chopped
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 4 large egg yolks
- 4 large egg whites
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.
- Combine dates, walnuts, flour, sugar, and baking powder in a large bowl. Stir in egg yolks until combined.
- Beat egg whites in a clean, large glass or metal mixing bowl until stiff peaks form. Fold whites into date mixture until no streaks remain. Spoon into the prepared pan.
- Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 90 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 633 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 71 g |
| Cholesterol | 51 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 9 g |
| Protein | 13 g |
| Saturated Fat | 4 g |
| Sodium | 81 mg |
| Sugars | 50 g |
| Fat | 38 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Think I’d have 50% brown sugar and 50% white sugar. Making it a darker texture. Maybe a tad more flour and 5 eggs… Mom used to making a scrumptious cake like this but never had a recipe doing it all by memory, and I never thought to ask…
I had the joy of sharing with a friend from Germany…
I made three fruitcakes this year and this is the one I will keep! A classy cake perfect throughout the year. Simple and nutritious. Like Resonnant, I had my doubts that it wouldn’t hold together, but after adding the eggs, it worked! Because the dates were sticky while chopping, I kept the knife wet and clean, and dropped the date pieces into the flour and sugar, mixed them around in the flour to avoid a date clump.
This is a recipe I have been searching for to make for my hyusband. His mother made it at Christmas. Her recipe added marishino cherries so i ADDED A 16 oz jar to the recipe with the other ingredients…Awesome!!
This cake is absolutely amazing! I had my doubts while mixing the ingredients because after adding the yolks it stayed quite dry. Next up were the egg whites and THEN it all made sense. It began to stick together. I didn’t press it all together or pat it down in the pan but I think I’ll do so next time. I followed the recipe exactly and didn’t change anything. This is such a simple recipe but wonderful and old fashioned-ish.
I made this for Christmas this year and got good reports on it from friends. It is an easy cake to make. I had to pit and chopped the dates by hand – this took a while but otherwise it is not time consuming to make. I used a bundt pan.
i’m not sure why it turned out like it did, but it wasn’t even a “cake” anymore. more like a combination of walnut and dates clumped together. still quite yummy, but i would recommend a bit more sugar. maybe make sure that you have enough flour and eggs to have a more cakelike consistency to the batter before baking. definitely will try again, even thought the ingredients are slightly expensive.
I don’t know what I did, but it came out extremely dry, but it had a really good flavor to it. I would make it once more, just in case it was me.
Mine does not look like the picture, it is short and quite heavy?? I love walnuts and I love dates, but I only like the ‘cake’. I’m not sure I would make it again……
I made this for Christmas and everyone raved about it! I also made a granadilla flavoured icing that i drizzled over it and the tanginess really complemented the cake flavour. Will definately be making this every year for christmas now.
Absolutely delicious! This has become a Chritmas time favourite in our family. I use light muscovado sugar instead of white sugar for a more wholesome flavour. I also often halve the recipe and bake the cake in an 8 inch tube pan. Turns out perfectly every time.
This is more of a confection than a cake – and it is wonderful. Unbelievably delicious, and extremely beautiful.
I am new to baking and this was just the third cake I tried, ever. It came out really well. I took it to a friend’s place for dinner and the cake got over in no time. I scaled the recipe for 8 servings instead of 16 and reduced the amount of dates and walnuts by half since the ingredients are expensive and I am not very experienced. The cake still came out really well. The one thing I realized half way through was that there were very little wet ingredeients and after I added the yolk, the batter was still not wet and homogenous. I almost gave up at that point. If you are new to baking, don’t worry about this, the cake turns out yummy despite this. Another hurdle was the dates; they were really soft and were sticking to each other. I dusted each piece with flour before mixing them with the other dry ingredients and the remaining flour. This can be time consuming, but worth the effort.
I experimented with this cake having had one of a similar name at a wedding. This was different, but wow, was it great! I took it to work and everyone wanted the recipe. I enjoy it without icing, but added, for work, an icing made of 1 and 1/4 c. icing sugar, sifted, 2 tbsp. softened butter, and maple syrup until it was the consistency to drizzle over the cake. I found by purchasing chopped dates separated by a little flour, that the prep time was considerably shortened. I also found that I could make some extra cupcakes as the recipe was quite large.