• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 cup chopped dates
• ¼ cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup chopped walnuts
• 1 cup flaked coconut
• ⅔ cup packed brown sugar
• 6 tablespoons butter
• ¼ cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees; grease a 9×13 metal baking pan. You’ll be finishing the topping under the broiler, so don’t use a glass pan.

Put dates in a small bowl, and pour boiling water over them. Let stand until cool. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, soda, salt, and nuts.

In yet another bowl, cream ¼ cup butter and white sugar together; beat in egg and vanilla. Add one-third of flour to butter, and mix just until moistened. Stir in half of the dates. Add another one-third of the flour, mixing until moist, and then the rest of the dates. Finish with the last third of the flour mix. Don’t overmix or the cake will be tough.

Spread the batter into the baking pan and bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick comes out clean, about 30-40 minutes.

When the cake is almost ready to come out, mix the coconut, brown sugar, 6 tablespoons of butter, and cream in a small saucepan and heat to boiling. Boil for three minutes. Pour over the hot cake, change the oven to the broil setting, and put the cake back into the oven until the topping browns.

Like all of the recipes in this category, we haven’t tried this yet. But it looks like it will work, and sounds delicious to us. Actually, it sounds like it will have a taste in the neighborhood of sticky toffee pudding, which Carla adores. When we finally get around to a test batch, we’ll move this into the category where it really belongs. If you try it out before we do, let us know about your results!