I definitely adore sweet spreads. The classic Nutella, its wonderful variations or just simple honey and its even more gorgeous mixes are my daily sweets. I must confess, I usually eat them right off the spoon instead of spreading them on a slice of bread. Why dilute a wonderful spread? It is already perfect as it is. And with honey, there is nothing better to soothe an itchy throat than a spoon of soft and sweet honey. While searching for new ideas, I thought about making a spread out of dates. As always, I consulted the net first. Surprisingly, there were not many, actually only a few recipes for a date spread. Nevertheless, I found this wonderful recipe.
The experiments
Immediately I tried it for my next sweet craving, since it is really simple and straightforward. I even took a shortcut, since I already had a lot of date paste. It was a one step process: simply mixed the orange juice with date paste and cardamom in a blender. The taste was super sweet, but it did mellow with time (an hour or so). And the cardamom aftertaste was almost too strong. So I added salt, which definitely made an improvement and a dash of cinnamon, which further complemented the taste. Definitely the spread has to rest for a couple of hours, for the tastes to blend and combine. And the best thing is that in that time the spread solidifies even further becoming a real thick, creamy spread. After storage in the fridge overnight the spread got its final, full and nicely balanced taste. After two days the spice tone got even softer, almost to the point of background taste. So something to be made a bit in advance and not to be judged immediately after preparation.
Since cinnamon was such an improvement, and the final taste was so delicate, I tried adding other spaces to the spread in my next try. Something with more fire, like cloves or allspice. Since the end result was so good and the preparation so easy, I decided to adopt the recipe directly, without further research or modifications.
Sweet date spread recipe
- 120 g Date paste
- 200 mL Orange juice
- Cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, cloves, salt
Just squeeze the oranges and blend them with date paste in a blender. Add the spices to taste (a pinch of every spice should be enough). Blend some more and store in the fridge overnight to get the final, balanced taste.
