Date & Walnut Tea Cake for winter warmth
Kim M. Watt
So, let's be clear right from the start. This is a tea cake, not a teacake.
The distinction is important, you see, because a teacake has no tea in it, and is not a cake. It's a bread roll. Or a bap, a cob, a barm, a bun, or any number of other regional variations, all of which simply mean: it's a small round bread thing.
When I was living in West Yorkshire at one point, in a small village not far from Leeds, I worked in a deli/cafe type place. It was very nice, and there were many cakes and treats on offer as well as sandwiches and so on, but one thing that was very popular, particular with older customers, was a toasted teacake with butter. It was a round, slightly flat bread roll with currants in it, nothing exciting, but nice enough.
Ah-ha, I thought. A teacake is a currant bun, then. And I congratulated myself on my ability to figure out dialect, and moved on.
Until someone asked for tuna salad on a teacake, which, well. The customer is always right and all that.
Luckily one of the other staff, being a Yorkshire person, stopped me before I served up tuna salad on a currant bun, and explained that a teacake in Yorkshire is a plain bread roll. The currant ones are called teacakes UK-wide. Which is unnecessarily confusing, but English always is, so I don't know what else I expected ...
As an extra aside (since we're already well aside from the point of this post, which is tea cake), I shared a similar graphic to the one above in the Toot Hansell Auxiliary over on Facebook, and people have very strong opinions about the naming of small forms of bread. This delights me far more than it should, just so you know.
Anyway. We are here to talk about tea cake, which does have tea in it, and is a cake. And, as this version is stuffed with dried fruit and nuts, it's excellent investigative fuel. It keeps well (being one of those better-the-next-day cakes), is super-easy to make, and is very, very tasty. I fear it may not be a truly classic tea cake, as I've eschewed the traditional raisins for dates, but hopefully people are less staunch about tea cakes than teacakes. And also, it being quite a solid sort of loaf, if anyone gets too upset I'll just throw a few defensive slices in their general direction then leg it.
Of course, it being a recipe post, we are talking about the next Beaufort Scales! Book nine is splashing closer on very damp and slightly chilled feet, and the ebook pre-order links are already live! (You can find them at the bottom of this post.)
So I'd get baking.
There's dragons on the way ...
(And if you would like to learn more about the teacake debate, the BBC have a great article here. Never let it be said I leave a rabbit hole unexplored ...)
Date & Walnut Tea Cake
- 250g / 1¼ cups roughly chopped dates
- 100g / ⅔ cup chopped walnuts
- 300 mL / 1¼ cups freshly brewed tea (Yorkshire, obviously)
- 85g / ⅓ cup granulated brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 250g / 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- Zest of one lemon
Brew the tea nice and strong, then soak the dates and walnuts for at least an hour, or overnight if you have time.
Grease and line a loaf tin, and pre-heat your oven to 180°C/350°F.
Throw everything together in a mixing bowl and give it a good old stir. It’ll be super-stiff (there really is no extra liquid or butter in here, that’s not a mistake), so you’ll need to spoon it into the prepared tin and spread it out, smoothing the top. If it really needs it, add a tablespoon of milk at the mixing stage to loosen things up, but it’s meant to be firm.
Bake for around an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. If it starts getting too dark on top, pop a bit of foil over it.
Cool and eat with a nice smear of butter. Keeps well for a week, and is even better the next day.
Notes:
- Use whatever dry fruit you fancy, and change out the nuts or omit them altogether, adding extra fruit instead. Just no glacé cherries, okay? Or I’ll take back my recipe ;)
- I don’t feel this needs any spices, letting the flavour of the tea give it a subtle lift instead, but feel free to throw in what you like. This is a very adaptable recipe.
- Coffee would also be nice with the dates and walnuts, for the non-tea-lovers.
It never rains, but it pours.
And in Toot Hansell, that goes double…
When Toot Hansell’s water supply turns murky, it’s easy to blame the notoriously soggy Yorkshire weather. But this winter, the rain’s endless, the water’s undrinkable, and the village is slowly turning into a bog.
The local water sprite, Nellie, could probably sort it all out – if she hadn’t mysteriously vanished, leaving behind a battalion of furious geese, which are only adding to the problems. Now the only clean water in town is arriving in pricey bottles from Toot Hansell’s new wellness guru, Lachlan Jameson.
And the rising water isn’t the only problem. People are disappearing, strange faces are appearing in the streams, and quicksand is starting to become a real concern. The dragons and the ladies of the Women’s Institute know this is more than a bit of inclement weather, and they’re not going to stand by and watch their village drown.
But the deeper they wade into the mystery, the murkier things get. Because something is lurking in the depths—and if the WI, the dragons, and one reluctantly off-the-books detective inspector don’t get to the bottom of it soon, the whole valley might be swept away.
This winter, it’ll take tea, teamwork, and all the stubborn deviousness of ladies of a certain age to keep Toot Hansell from being washed off the map…
Fancy getting the book the instant it’s launched, rushing onto your e-reader in a wash of feathers and muddy footprints? Then the pre-orders are live!
You can pre-order at Amazon here,
Paperbacks will be available to order closer to launch day, and I will be back next week with a sneak preview of the first chapter!
Now tell me, lovely people – what do you call those little, round, bread-based things? Share away below!