We love this dessert from the awesome Schlafly Bottleworks in St Louis, so we tried to make it ourselves. Schlafly makes the recipe available on their website, and I am presenting it below in a neighbor dinner friendly format. 🙂 The Bottleworks serves this cake in huge squares with vanilla bean whipped cream on the side. Delicious, but we preferred smaller serving sizes and the incomparable Haagen-Dazs Ginger Ice Cream. Sadly, this flavor appears to have been discontinued….recommend trying this homemade version found over at Eating Well.
Ingredients
- Oils/Spices: pinch salt, 3 tsp vanilla extract,
- Baking: 1 lb. sugar, 1 lb AP flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1 lb dark brown sugar
- Produce: 1 lb dates
- Dairy: 5 oz.unsalted butter, 5 large eggs, 1 lb salted butter, 1 cup heavy cream
- Other: 2 c. Hot water, 2 tsp.Baking soda
Instructions
- Chop dates in food processor
- Preheat conventional oven to 350 F.
- Grease 1 9″ x 13″ pan with unsalted butter and coat lightly with flour, shake out excess flour.
- Combine dates with hot water in a saucepan, bring to boil, then remove from heat.
- Add baking soda to dates and set aside to cool.
- In a mixing bowl cream butter and sugar on high speed for 3 minutes.
- With mixer on low speed, add eggs one at a time until fully incorporated.
- Add flour, baking powder, salt and 2 tsp vanilla extract to mixer and combine thoroughly.
- When fully mixed add the dates and their liquid.
- Place batter into greased pan and bake in preheated oven about 30-45 mis.
- While cake is baking, stir together brown sugar, salted butter and 1 tsp vanilla extract on low heat, until brown sugar is melted.
- Whisk heavy cream into brown sugar mixture. Welcome to delicious caramel sauce!
- When cake is done (insert a skewer in the middle and make sure it comes out clean), cool it on a baking rack before removing from the pan.
- Spoon warm caramel sauce over individual servings of warm STP and cold ice cream or whipped cream (optional).
neighbor dinners 