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Date Filling
1 pound dates 1 cup sugar (white or brown) 1 cup boiling water Flavor to taste Boil till soft and tender.
When cool, spread between cakes. Rind and juice of half an orange or lemon are sometimes added.
A straightforward cooked date paste, written in an era when dates arrived pressed into blocks and still full of pits. The only judgment calls are how long to boil and how sweet to make it.
- Buy pitted datesA pound of dates in this period commonly meant whole fruit that had to be stoned by hand and the flesh torn apart. Buy pitted Deglet Noor or Medjool and chop them coarsely first; they will break down faster.
- The sugar is optional nowA full cup of sugar to a pound of dates suits the dry, fibrous pressed dates of the period. Modern soft dates, especially Medjool, are sweet enough that a quarter cup, or none at all, gives a filling that still sets.
- "Boil till soft and tender"On a moderate heat this is roughly 10 to 15 minutes with chopped dates, stirring often. You want a thick jam that holds a line when a spoon is drawn across the pan bottom, not a syrup.
- Watch for scorchingSugar and fruit at a full boil catch quickly once the water goes. Use a heavy pan, stir down into the corners, and add a spoonful of water if it stiffens before the fruit has collapsed.
- Mash or blendThe original relies on the dates disintegrating. If yours stay lumpy, mash against the side of the pan or give the cooled filling a few pulses in a food processor for a smooth paste.
- "Flavor to taste"Vanilla, cinnamon or a pinch of salt all work. The orange or lemon suggested at the end is the better choice: the acid cuts what is otherwise a very sweet, one-note filling. Add the zest during cooking and the juice off the heat.
- Cool completely before spreadingWarm date paste will soak into cake crumb and tear it. The filling also thickens noticeably as it cools, so judge the consistency cold, not hot.
- Yield and keepingRoughly two to three cups, enough to fill two or three layers of an 8- or 9-inch cake, or a batch of filled cookies. It keeps about a week refrigerated in a covered jar and freezes well.
Date filling turns up in many North American community and flour-company cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s, often in the company of other dried-fruit fillings. Dates travelled well and kept for a long time, arriving from North Africa and the Middle East pressed into slabs or packed in boxes, which made them one of the few reliably available sweet fruits in a Canadian winter kitchen. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell flour, and its frostings-and-fillings section exists to give home bakers reasons to make layer cakes; a filling like this one, needing three ingredients and no eggs or cream, could be made from the pantry at any time of year. The same paste, thinned slightly, is often said to lie behind the filling in date squares and matrimonial cake, both of which became fixtures of the Prairie baking repertoire.