Chocolate & coffee with a twist

A cup of mocha's an essential start for me, 3 days a week. I love mixing chocolate with coffee...it's a perfect balance of sweet and bitterness that leaves me satisfied. A lot like life. But sometimes life also gives you surprises, so here's a chocolate and coffee cake with a twist: dates.

I found a new muse these past few weeks and stumbled upon the recipe there. Even though the picture of the cake looked delicious, I was reluctant to try the recipe at first. I know coffee and dates go well individually with chocolate, but I wasn't sure about mixing all three together. Furthermore, not everyone likes dates. Sometimes, you have to think of your recipient when you're baking :D Setting aside those concerns, I decided to give it a try.

The first bite was unique..I didn't know what to expect so it took a while to place the flavour and match it to a memory. A few bites later, the cake tasted more and more like chocolate. If you're familiar with the taste of dates, you can taste it very subtly in the background. Otherwise, you'll only recognize the chocolate. Even so, the dates gave the cake a very nice thick texture without being overly sweet.

My tip for this cake is to use GOOD QUALITY CHOCOLATE. Good quality cocoa powder and most importantly good quality CHOCOLATE CHIPS. Specially for this recipe, I substituted my regular home brand chocolate chips with Cadbury. The chocolate chips made the cake more special. When my friend advised me to use only the best quality when it comes to chocolate, she wasn't kidding. This small thing made a big difference. 

So for all you adventurous bakers out there, here's the recipe ;)

Chocolate, Coffee & Date Cake
makes one 20 cm (8-inch) cake

Ingredients
250g pitted dates, halved
1 1/4 cups hot strongly brewed coffee (5 tsp instant coffee powder dissolved in 1 1/4 cups of boiling water)
155g unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour 
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips (more if you like it chocolatey)

Method
1. Heat oven to 180C and butter a 20-cm cake pan.
2. Place pitted dates in a bowl and pour over the hot coffee. Let it sit for at least 5 minutes as you prepare the other ingredients.
3. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together the butter, caster sugar and brown sugar on medium speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.
4. Beat the eggs, one at a time and then the vanilla extract.
5. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a spatula and beat again until the mixture is uniform.
6. Place a sieve over the bowl with the butter mixture and put the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in the sieve.
7. Sift the dry ingredients.
8. With a spatula, mix the dry ingredients gently into the butter mixture until nearly combined (the batter is still very dry at this stage, it's okay). 
9. Pour the dates and coffee into a blender/food processor and puree the mixture completely.
10. Add the pureed dates to the batter, and mix with a spatula until all the ingredients are combined.
11. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and evenly sprinkle the top with chocolate chips.
12. Bake for 55-60 minutes. 
13. Cool the cake to room temperature and then turn onto a rack to cool further.
14. The cake is best served at room temperature and it keeps up to 4 days if wrapped air tight in room temperature. Dust with icing sugar before serving.