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Date Filling
2 cups dates cup beaten cream 2 tablespoons lemon juice cup powdered sugar Remove stones and cut dates in small pieces; add remaining ingredients and spread between cakes.
A no-cook filling for layer cakes: chopped dates bound with whipped cream and sharpened with lemon. It comes together in a few minutes, and the only real question is how loose you want it.
- Beaten creamThis means cream whipped to soft peaks, not scalded or clotted. Use heavy or whipping cream and stop while it still slumps a little, since folding in the dates will stiffen it further.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period 'powdered sugar' usually meant finely ground sugar, not necessarily the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar sold today; either will work here. The dates are already very sweet, so start with a couple of tablespoons and taste before adding more.
- Cream and sugar quantitiesThe amounts of cream and sugar as printed here are incomplete, and a whole cup of either would be out of proportion to 2 cups of dates. Roughly half a cup of cream and a quarter cup of sugar gives a spreadable filling; adjust to the consistency you want.
- DatesMedjool or Deglet Noor both work. Modern packaged dates are usually already pitted, but check by feel; a missed stone in a cake filling is unpleasant. If they are dry and hard, soak briefly in hot water and pat dry before chopping.
- ChoppingDates gum up a knife. Oiling the blade lightly, or snipping them with scissors, keeps the pieces separate. Aim for pieces no larger than a pea so the filling spreads evenly.
- Lemon juiceTwo tablespoons is a good deal of extra liquid to work into whipped cream and may thin it. Add the juice to the dates first, let them absorb it, then fold in the cream.
- Timing and keepingWhipped cream fillings weep. Assemble the cake within an hour or two of serving and keep it refrigerated; a cake filled the day before will have a damp crumb where the layers meet.
- YieldRoughly enough to fill, and lightly top, a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake.
Date fillings turn up in American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s, a period in which imported dates were increasingly available in grocery stores, shipped from the Persian Gulf and North Africa. They were used much as raisins and currants had been, as a sweet, sticky bulk ingredient for fillings, puddings and bars. Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate maker, and, as with other manufacturer-sponsored cookbooks of the era, its chocolate recipes sit within a broad general dessert repertoire. A filling like this one, needing no cooking and no custard, belongs to the same practical impulse -- something to be stirred together while the cake layers cool.