A Date With Mr Churchill!

Here’s the Cabinet War Rooms “Wartime Christmas” recipe for Orange and Date Cake. I made it the weekend before Christmas and it tasted surprisingly good.

Notice how it is artistically arranged to show off one of my Christmas plates!

INGREDIENTS

• 2 oz margarine
• 2 oz sugar
• 3 tbsp orange marmalade
• 4 oz dates, finely chopped
• 7 oz self raising flour
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 4 tbsp milk or water
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda [baking soda]
• 1 egg [fresh or reconstituted dried!]

Sift the dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl combine the other ingredients. Mix all well together [if it seems a little stiff, add another tbsp milk or water] Bake in a loaf tin at 170°C for about 50 minutes.

This is a fairly economical recipe – and if you have any dates left over from Christmas in one of those ‘glove boxes’, you could use those.

Why do so many of my wartime recipes include dates? Surely they were hard to get hold of?

Aw, come on Winnie – can’t your Clemmie let my Eleanor have that Orange and Date Cake Recipe?

That recipe is a State Secret. Never!