I wouldn’t say this is a date bread. There’s not much to it — dates and pecans all held together by a batter of whipped egg whites, yolks, sugar, vanilla, and baking powder — and baked for 2 to 3 hours. It’s an odd recipe that’s been one of my favorites for years.
Darlene gave me the recipe about 30 years ago. She was my dad’s secretary in Glendale, California. His corporate headquarters were in Salt Lake City, Utah (JB’s Big Boy Restaurants). But we lived in Glendale, so he had an office there as well — on Brand Blvd.
If I remember correctly, Darlene said that this recipe had been in her family for a long time. I’m pretty sure she made it at Christmas, but there’s no need to keep it as a holiday treat. It makes a perfectly good breakfast.
I like breads and fruits for breakfast instead of eggs — cuz I hate eggs (the smell of eggs reminds me of a time when I was barfing with pregnancy and our backyard hens were laying eggs from their roost — bombs away — which caused an awful stinky mess below on the straw, and which I often had to clean up — you get the picture.)
OK, so I think this date pecan loaf is healthy. Of course, I can eat it all day. I make it into two loaves instead of one big giant one. It cooks a little faster then. One of the secrets in baking this loaf is to put a pan of water on the rack in the oven, just below the loaves while they cook for hours at a low low temperature.
I’m going to do some calculations on the nutrition, so we can see the nutritive values. But even when I eat a lot of this bread, I don’t gain weight — that’s a plus. It might be a little expensive to make, considering the price of dates and pecans. I get my pecans at Costco and I’ve purchased the dates there too. I like the Hadley Deglet Noor Pitted Dates. They are grown out there in the Cabazan desert of Southern California.
As you can see — not much batter, it’s mostly pecans and dates.
- 1 pound pecans
- 1 pound dates
- 1 cup flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 4 eggs
- Chop the pecans and the dates.
- Put them in a large bowl.
- Next, Separate the eggs — beat the egg whites in a mixer until stiff but not dry.
- In a new bowl beat the yolks with a fork.
- Now, Add the yolks, flour, sugar, baking powder and vanilla to the egg whites and mix just enough to incorporate all the ingredients.
- Next, I pour all of this into the bowl of pecans and dates and stir it up.
- Mix thoroughly.
- Spray two loaf pans with non stick spray. I use two 8″ x 4″ pans. But you can also use a 9″ x 5″ pan.
- Spoon the mixture into the two pans.
- Place them in the oven which is at 275 degrees F.
- Put a small pan of water on the rack in the oven just underneath the two pans of date bread.
- Bake for 2 hours for the two loaves. If you use one larger loaf pan, bake for 3 hrs.
- Remove from oven.
- Cool.
- Cut into slices.
- Each loaf will make 12 slices, total 24 slices for the two loaves.
[nutrition-label id=7531]
