chocolate date cake – CafeGarima

Raksha Bandhan signifies sibling love and care and like all Indian festivals is accompanied by sweet goodies and desserts. Sisters tie bands around their brothers’ wrists and these bands are called Rakhis.

I made some baby Gulab Jamuns to celebrate the occasion. These are mini balls of cottage cheese and khoya, soaked in sugar syrup. Find the recipe for gulab jamuns here. These are just a baby version of the large ones. I like them better as they get done in a jiffy as they are quicker to fry and soak syrup much faster- a veritable blessing during the extended cooking hours on festive occasions.

I also baked these sinful gooey Choco-date cranberry bars topped with chocolate ganache. Well, there is no such thing as too much chocolate, is there!

Choco-date Cranberry Bars

All Purpose Flour/Maida- 1 ½ Cup+1 Tsp (for dusting the fruit and nut mixture)
Cocoa powder- ½ cup
Baking Powder- 2 tsp
Eggs, at room temperature- 2
Powdered sugar- 1 Cup
Oil/Butter, room temperature- 160 grams
Vanilla extract- 2 Tsp
Dates and cranberries, chopped roughly- 1 cup
Milk, at room temperature- ½ cup (use only if needed)

Preheat the oven to 180 degree C and prepare a cake tin by lining and greasing. I always line my pan for ease of removing the cakes from the pan, specially the nutty ones.
Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder thrice and set aside.
Mix the cranberries and dates and sprinkle a tsp of APF/Maida and mix well coating them. This will ensure that they do not sink to the bottom on baking.
Take sugar and oil/butter in a medium size bowl and beat with an electric beater till light and fluffy.

Add the eggs and beat till well incorporated

Add in the vanilla essence and mix once.

Fold in the flour mixture with a spatula.

If the batter is too thick, add some milk. I needed to add about ½ cup. We need a thick dropping consistency batter.
Gently fold in the dates and cranberries.

Bake on 180C for 30- 40 minutes or till a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Oven temperatures vary, so please check after 30 minutes.

I topped it with chocolate ganache and some grated chocolate and silver balls.

Chocolate Ganache
The recipe is from here

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup heavy cream (I used malai and it worked beautifully)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature (I used Amul)

Place chocolate in a medium heatproof bowl, set aside.

Place cream in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Pour over chocolate and let stand until chocolate has softened, about 5 minutes.