These pictures are not the prettiest, but the result is superb. It is another make-in-a-pan (my favourite kind... i am fundamentally lazy about creaming butter with sugar) cake stuffed with sticky fruit and syrupy stem ginger, keeps well (at least a week) and needs no fancy filling or icing to look spectacular. Lighter than a traditional fruit cake but reeling with healthy fibre it makes an excellent alternative to a (boring but well-intentioned) sponge cake. For a birthday boy i covered this one in chocolate ganache, but a simple dusting of icing sugar would suffice.

Sticky Date Cake (from Fantastic Party Cakes by Mich Turner)

200g dates, stoned
200g unsalted butter
300g dark muscovado sugar
2 eggs
50g chopped stem ginger
grated zest of a lemon
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g bramley apples, grated
200g self raising flour

Preheat oven to 160ºC. Lightly grease a Kugelhopf tin (ideally 20cm, although i only have a 22cm tin, which worked well)

Place the dates in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Melt the butter and sugar together in a saucepan and allow to cool slightly.



Beat the eggs, ginger, lemon zest and vanilla extract into the butter and sugar. Drain the dates and chop finely. Add to the saucepan and mix well.







Stir in the apple and flour, then spoon into the tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour 15 minutes until well risen. A skewer inserted will come out clean-ish.

Leave to cool in the tin.



For the chocolate ganache:

175g dark chocolate, broken into pieces, in a clean dry bowl.
125g fresh double cream

Heat the cream to the boil and pour over the chocolate pieces, stirring until the ganache is smooth and glossy. Pour slowly over the cake, using a flat knife to spread the thick tide of chocolate into every corner.