I had purchased a bunch of dates for Christmas baking back in November. 1 Kilo was cheaper than the 350 grams that I really needed. The purchasing decision was easy. I’ve been focusing on using up the rest of the ingredients I had purchased for holiday baking.

The hubster has wanted Matrimonial Cake that he remembered from his days while in res at UBC. Sometime ago someone published the recipe and he had forwarded it to me to keep on file. I had uploaded it to my recipe file box site. When I went to retrieve the recipe this week, the file was corrupted. I did bunch of searching but I haven’t been able to come up with the UBC recipe. If you have it please let me know.

You might be asking: What is Matrimonial Cake? It refers to Western Canadian speak for Date squares.

Meanwhile I came up with this recipe which was a bit of a mash up of two Canadian Living Date Square recipes.

I baked this back in January 2022.

Matrimonial Cake

HolidayBakerMan

AKA Date Squares

Print Recipe

Ingredients

Filling

375 grams Dates - Chopped
2 cups Water
150 grams Sugar
2 tbsp Lemon Juice
3/4 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Nutmeg

Base and Topping

280 grams Rolled Oats - Large Flake
170 grams All Purpose Flour
213 grams Light Brown Sugar
1 tsp Salt
227 grams Butter - Chilled and cut into cubes
50 - 100 grams Pecans - Chopped
1 tsp Cinnamon

Instructions

In a saucepan, stir together, water, dates, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Bring to a boil and remove from the heat and allowed to sit for 30 minutes.
Bring the date mixture to a boil again and mash with a potato masher and continue to boil until excess water is no longer visible. 10 or so minutes. Pour mixture into a bowl and cool.
In a large bowl mix oats, flour, brown sugar and salt. Cut in the chilled butter until the mixture is in coarse crumbs.
Add 1/2 of the oat mixture to a lined 8" square pan and press into an even layer.
Pour the date mixture over the base layer. Smooth out into an even layer.
Add cinnamon and pecans to the remaining oat mixture and mix well.
Add the oat mixture as the final layer in the pan. Smooth out and gently press into the date mixture.
Bake in a 350° oven until golden brown. About 45 minutes.
Cool and slice into squares.

Bakers Notes:

I didn’t have 375 grams of dates. I supplemented what I had with raisins to make up the weight
I don’t believe traditional matrimonial cake has nuts or cinnamon in it, so feel free to leave these out
Salt in the recipe is ultra important to round out the sweetness