Caramelized Date & Black Cocoa Einkorn Loaf Cake with Vanilla Bean Creme Fraiche Icing

Deep chocolate einkorn flour loaf cake studded with caramelized medjool dates and wrapped in a luscious blanket of vanilla bean glaze.

Hi everyone! As I impatiently waited for any variety of fresh figs to appear on my grocery store shelves, a basket of gorgeous medjool dates caught my eye.

If you are unfamiliar with dates, they are a sticky, sweet fruit grown in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and other warm climates, with the history of their cultivation dating back to ancient Mesopotamia. Dates naturally have the most delicious, rich caramel flavor and can be used in both savory and sweet preparations. The bake I have for you today most certainly falls under the latter.

Now that summer is imminent, ice cream season is as well. If you have never tried, please consider this post my formal endorsement of the best way to enjoy ice cream this summer: full-fat cream vanilla bean ice cream, caramelized dates, dark chocolate chips, sea salt, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. I know it sounds a bit out there, but please trust that I would not lie to you this far into our friendship.

Because this ice cream concoction is something I so look forward to indulging myself in once the sun hangs in the sky past my usual bedtime, I felt the inescapable urge to convert this treat into a cake of some kind. The portable, casual nature of ice cream inspired me to develop a loaf cake, whose style is a bit more simplistic than some of my more eccentric layered bakes.

The base of this loaf cake is a black cocoa sponge infused with extra virgin olive oil and extra salt for an extremely indulgent, moist, and cakey texture. I’ve chosen to use einkorn flour here instead of all-purpose. Einkorn flour is an ancient form of wheat that yields a bit of a denser crumb and more wholesome flavor. Einkorn is also a bit lower in gluten than usual wheat flour, so it can be better tolerated for those with more sensitive stomachs. Not every baked good can be substituted with einkorn flour, but it works extremely well in this sponge, which is based on my Dark Chocolate Olive Oil Cake. Because the other components of this cake are so sweet, creating a less sweet, saltier sponge works in balancing the flavor profile of the cake as a whole.

Medjool dates are chopped and then caramelized over the stovetop until golden brown and deeply flavorful. Because the batter is fairly thin, the dates do mostly sink to the bottom, which is something I usually I try to avoid when adding mix-ins to cakes. In this case, specifically, the dates create this delicious, chewy, caramel-y bottom layer that adds intrigue to the texture of each slice.

The loaf cake is then topped with a crème fraîche vanilla bean icing as a loving homage to the most ignored and taken for granted ice cream flavor of all time. This icing is very simple and can be easily adjusted in terms of sweetness to fit your taste buds.

---