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Date Squares with Ice Cream
2 eggs, separated 1 cup Dromedary Dates, chopped 1 cup walnut meats, chopped 1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 tablespoon orange juice Beat eggs and sugar together, add orange juice, dates, nuts, and flour sifted with baking powder. Mix and bake slowly for 25 minutes. Cut in squares and serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped and sweetened cream.
A flourless-in-all-but-name date torte: one tablespoon of flour holds together two cups of fruit and nuts, so the eggs do nearly all the structural work. A few things go unsaid in the original.
- The separated eggsThe ingredient list says "separated" but the method says only to beat the eggs with the sugar. The intent is almost certainly to beat the yolks with the sugar, then fold in whites whipped to soft peaks; that aeration is what keeps the bars from turning into dense candy. Treating them as whole eggs works but gives a chewier, flatter result.
- "Bake slowly"A slow oven in a book of this vintage means about 300-325F. At 25 minutes the centre should be set and just barely moist; higher heat scorches the sugar and dates before the middle firms.
- Pan sizeNo pan is specified. A greased 8-inch square pan gives a bar about half an inch thick, which suits the 25-minute time. A 9x13 spreads it too thin and it will be dry well before the timer.
- One tablespoon of flour is correctIt is not a typographical error. Sugar and egg carry the structure here, as in a macaroon. Do not be tempted to add more flour or the texture goes cakey and the date flavour recedes.
- The datesDromedary dates were sold pitted. Any pitted date works; check for stray pits, and tossing the chopped pieces with the measured flour (rather than sifting it in) helps them separate instead of clumping.
- CuttingCut while still warm but not hot, then let the squares cool in the pan. Cut cold and the edges crumble; cut hot and they slump.
- YieldAbout sixteen 2-inch squares from an 8-inch pan, which serves six to eight when plated with ice cream.
Dromedary was a date brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, which imported and packed pitted dates and published small promotional booklets like this one to widen the market for a fruit many American cooks associated chiefly with Christmas sweetmeats. Recipes of this type -- eggs, sugar, chopped dates and walnuts bound with a spoonful of flour -- circulated widely in the first decades of the twentieth century under names such as date torte, date bars and "date sticks," and the format survives essentially unchanged in modern date-nut bar recipes. Serving a cut bar warm under ice cream, as here, fits a period taste for turning a plain baked square into a dinner dessert.