[Sca-cooks] OP: Chocolate Date Nut Cake

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Well, i guess Pennsic is over, but here's one last non-Medieval post, 
before we get back to our usual business.

Back when i was a tween, i think it was in 1960 or 61, a friend of my 
mom's brought us a cake she'd made. I really liked it and got the 
recipe from her. The batter was made with flour, unsweetened cocoa 
powder, and dates, poured into a square pan, topped with chocolate 
chips and chopped walnuts (and granulated sugar, but i left that out 
after making it that way once), and baked. I made it with success - 
this was unusual, since i usual failed at making boxed cake mix.

A friend is getting married this fall and i've been invited to a 
shower at which we're supposed to donate a favorite recipe. I haven't 
cooked this cake in over a quarter of a century, but it was one of 
the first things to come to mind.

I don't know what i did with the recipe, and, alas, the woman who had 
given me the recipe died last year... (she was my mom's age, in her 
mid-80s). So, what the heck, i thought, i'll look on the internet.

Well, lo, and behold! Not only did i find the recipe, i discovered 
that it seems still to be a popular recipe and to have permutated in 
the almost 45 years since i first had it.

There were a number of recipes that were pretty much the same old 
recipe i remembered with very slight variations.
-- There was a version made with mayonnaise.
-- There was a whole wheat version with ground flaxseeds, pureed 
tofu, and fat substitute in the batter, sweetened with maple syrup, 
but it still had cocoa and dates in the cake and was topped with 
chocolate chips and walnuts.
-- There was a version that won a Texas state fair, which included 
mashed bananas in the batter along with the dates, then baked the 
batter - still topped with chocolate chips and walnuts - in two round 
cake pans, had a chocolate-cream cheese filling between the layers, 
and was completely frosted on the top and sides with a butter cream 
frosting and then garnished with nuts (my arteries hardened just 
reading the recipe - i thought it was really gilding the lily - the 
old cake was fine without all the extra goop).

It was called Cowboy Cake, Traveling Gal's Cake, and, well, 
Chocolate-Date Cake. It was even featured on the site of a Bed and 
Breakfast that was known for its cooking.

No site i saw had any information about its origins. I'm curious 
about its history, even though it's 20th century. I can't check my 
own library, as i have hardly any ordinary cookbooks besides The Joy 
of Cooking. Ever since i began cooking in 1967 i have cooked either 
health food or ethnic food (my first cookbook purchase - in 1967 - 
was of an Indian cookbook and a Mexican cookbook, both of which i 
still have, now replaced by much more authentic cookbooks). And now i 
cook Medieval. So my knowledge of standard 20th century cooking is 
severely limited.

Anyone here have any ideas? Sorry to be so off topic, but i don't 
want to join some modern recipe sharing list just for this.

Anahita