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 avocado oil, canola oil can also be used)
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
- Nonstick cooking spray
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 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and set on a wire rack to cool.
NOTES
Nutrition
tried this recipe?
Let us know in the comments!
Other Great Recipe Ideas
I made this honey cake and one from Epicurious (with a chocolate glaze and sea salt flakes). They were both delicious, but this one was the best and disappeared first.
What an amazing cake! It looks delicious!
OMG, Tori! The moistness of this cake just jumps right out of the picture. I can’t wait to make it for Rosh Hashana. I will be making the Vanilla Pudding Kugel, too I want to make really sure that this New Year is nice and sweet! Thanks for the great recipes! My best to you and your family.
This looks incredible, what a great recipe!! You and your dishes never cease to amaze me Tori! 🙂
Can you not use pitted dates???
You definitely can use pitted dates, Ben. It’s an easy cake, and using pitted dates will make it even easier!
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. We were in Israel about a year ago at this time and brought back some date ‘honey’ with us. Our guide had told us the same thing about Biblical references to honey as you mentioned in your post. Anyway, I have been looking for a recipe for making date nut cake ever since I returned from my Israel trip, but couldn’t find anything that sounded good…until now! Perfect!
Love ur profile photo, Tori!
That looks so mouth-watering good..ENVY!
This cake looks great! I’ll definitely be making it for a friend soon =)
This cake looks amazing and incredibly moist. Great recipe. : )
It’s good to see more Rosh Hoshanah recipes out there–I might need to make this next week!
This cake looks perfectly moist and delicious, Tori!! Great idea!!
This cake sounds amazing! It looks so moist, I will definitely be making this!
What a wonderful little cake, Tori! I’ll definitely be adding it to my to-bake list 🙂 Hope your media tour’s gone well this week 🙂 Have a great weekend!
Holy Moses!!!! Yum!
Hi there! Just wanted to let you know that I tried out this recipe and really loved it! Not too sweet, great flavors…thanks for sharing the recipe! 😀
Tori this is fantastic. I love dates, I love honey and I love cake. So is perfect. Kudos on being creative. Love this one. I found the fact about the honey being thought to come from dates not bees really interesting. You’ve got a real winner here.
I have a tendency to shy away from regular fruit cake-too many add ins. I am picky when it comes to dried fruit, but the singular addition of dried dates is perfectly acceptable! This may become the new fruit cake for the family-thanks for sharing. It does look tasty.
This date cake is definitely going on my Rosh Hashanah menu! When we were in Israel we ate a lot of date honey and brought some home with us. Divine! I need to find a source closer to home…
Wishing you a sweet and healthy New Year!
Oh My, the bread looks great.