Honey Nut Date Cake Recipe: Bridal Shower for Megan & Belated L'Shana Tova

I've known Megan for at least three years now. We met virtually because of our love of food, blogging and tweeting ;) Luckily, we finally had a chance to meet in real life the last time I was in Boston. Even more lucky, we liked each other in real life and shared a wonderful evening of tapas.

When I was asked to participate in a virtual bridal shower for Megan, I said yes, but wasn't sure what to bake. After all, not only is Megan great at baking, but she actually used to work at a bakery!

Originally, I was thinking about making a Russian sour cream cake because I love it, but I wasn't too happy with my mom's directions {sorry, mom!}. So I kept on thinking.

Then I realized that the weekend I was planning to bake something for the virtual bridal shower was Rosh Hashana: Jewish New Year, and it all came together!

Megan is marrying Jeff, who is Jewish. Marriage is a start of a wonderful new happy journey and is a big celebration that includes a cake. So I decided to make a Honey Nut Date Cake from The Shiksa ;) Not only would it be perfect for my New Year Celebration dinner I was hosting for friends, but it would be very symbolic for Megan's shower.

Since I made the recipe as is, I'm not going to retype the exact ingredients and directions.

You basically combine cake flour, a few spices, brown sugar, honey, nuts, dates, oil and eggs together and bake. Easy enough, right?

I decided to make two versions of the cake: one exactly like The Shiksa's, another with my little twist: an addition of chocolate chips and orange zest.

{Note: here is the story behind the baking containers.}
Halfway through the baking process I realized that I forgot to add oil. OY! No one is perfect. The cakes without oil were edible, but obviously on the dry side. Luckily, I had enough ingredients to make one more cake. That's the one pictured below:

Here is a picture of my unintentionally oil-free cake with nuts, dates, honey, orange zest and chocolate chips:

And this is the super moist and rich cake with all the necessary ingredients:

Megan and Jeff, I wish you a wonderful wedding day filled with family, friends, food, music and laughter. May your marriage be as sweet as this cake.

xoxo,
Olga

PS I sliced the cake that was missing oil, toasted it and smeared it with butter: awesome results ;)
PPS see more of Megan's virtual bridal shower here.