[Sca-cooks] OP: Chocolate Date Nut Cake

[ysabeau]

This sounds like one of my favorite holiday treats. We called it 
polka daters. The recipe I have is for an 9x13 pan and doesn't 
have cocoa in it. It is kind of like a spice cake with dates, 
chocolate chips and nuts in it. Does your recipe call for any 
spices?

I have no idea of the origins...it was something my mom learned to 
make when she lived in the hills of West Virginia (Clay County). 
It isn't Christmas for me without it. You might try searching 
through some hillbilly or Appalachian cookbooks or histories. I'm 
trying to think of that project to document these types of things -
 the Wildfire series? 

Ysabeau
Barony of Bryn Gwlad
Ansteorra


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: lilinah at earthlink.net
Reply-To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 19:02:44 -0700

>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
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>Sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
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>
 

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