Vanilla, Cream Cheese and Date Cake

My daughter had an end- of-term party coming up at school (I don't think we ever had such things...for that matter I don't remember going to play school, I think it was straightaway Kindergarten at 3 years) and every child was required to bring one item for the party.

Mine was to bring a snack while her friend was to bring a cake - her mother asked me whether I would bake a cake so that she didn't have to give store bought cake with all that sugar and icing. So we swapped and I came up with a delicious cake adapting this recipe from the Joy of Cooking site.

The kids enjoyed this simple fluffy cake with the childhood favourite Vanilla - the cream cheese made it that much more flavourful and soft.

I am sending this to Masterbaker's April theme - Vanilla Each month Nikki picks one ingredient and we get to bake whatever we want, then she bakes up a bunch of the entries and picks a winner - simple and fun!

Vanilla, Cream Cheese and Date Cake

Ingredients:

Refined flour (maida) - 2 cups
Butter - 1 cup
Cream Cheese - 3/4 cup (I used cream cheese spread and cut out the 1/4 tsp salt in the recipe, you can also use fresh thick hung curd)
Eggs - 3
Sugar - 1 cup
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
Baking soda - 1 /4 tsp
Vanilla scrapings from one pod or 3/4 tbsp vanilla essence
Pitted and chopped dates - 1 cup

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C and lightly grease a cake pan and keep aside.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. into a bowl. Soak chopped dates in 1/4 cup of warm milk and keep aside.

3 Beat the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar a little at a time and beat until creamy and smooth.

4. Beat in the eggs, one at time and mix well. Add vanilla bean extract or vanilla essence and beat well.

5. Fold in the flour mixture gently until just mixed, drain and add the dates and pour the cake batter into the greased pan.

6. Bake for 1 hour at 180C or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack for 15 -20 minutes, before removing out of the pan and cooling again.