It has been too long. Way too long. I don't know where the last three months went by (apart from five weddings and a vacation) but I'm hoping to keep a tab on the coming months. Thankfully I have no more excuses left to update recipes now, so I hope to do this more often.
I don't ever remember having Date Squares before I made this one. It intrigued me even more when I was planning to make it for a cook along because it sounded so healthy and because I knew I could make it even healthier. I used this recipe from Joy Of Baking as my base and played around with it to make it vegan and healthy. I eliminated wheat from the recipe (though I know sometimes oats can be contaminated with wheat) and also used organic jaggery instead of sugar. The addition of coconut to the base gives it a nice nutty flavour and the carrots are just for added bursts of orange.
I was not so convinced about this recipe until I tried it and I think you should too.
You need:
For the base and crumble:
3 cups Oats powdered
¼ tsp Salt
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp Cinnamon
½ cup Desiccated Coconut
1 medium carrot grated
½ cup jaggery melted
½ tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp oil
For the filling:
400gms pitted dates
1/2 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp orange peel
Preheat your oven to 180
Mix all the dry ingredients for the crumble and then add the wet ingredients. Make it into a thick firm dough.
Boil the dates with ½ cup water for 15 minutes. Make sure it doesn’t burn. Once it cools, blend it into a smooth paste and add more water if required. Add the vanilla and orange peel.
In a square or rectangular baking dish lined with parchment paper, put 2/3rds of the oat mixture and spread evenly. Spread the date mixture on top of it. Crumble the rest of the oat mixture on top of it.
Bake for 45-50 minutes.
It should be a lovely golden brown on top.
In other news, I am on my way to improving my "make a cake look pretty" skills. This is something I made for an order as an engagement cake at The Green Stove. The bottom tier is a Vanilla Sponge with Vegan White chocolate Frosting and the top is all Dark Chocolate. What do you think?
