Recipes Revisited 3: Date and Walnut Cake- vegan, no sugar

Would you guess this picture was taken under artificial light?

This time it's my husband's turn to give a favourite recipe of ours a makeover: he chose date and walnut cake/ loaf, as it's one of his best- loved combos. I have made at least three versions before; here, here and here, all of which turn out out well, but there's always room for another! -And this one has certainly put my previous attempts in the shade- it's light, moist, even-textured and has just the perfect level of sweetness. He also set up a lamp for photographing food indoors now that we are nearly back on GMT and the nights are so much longer and darker. It's a small metal halide floodlamp, which gives off white light, and is pretty effective, as you can see from the photo above. The only thing is positioning it, as we have no stand. This time it was balanced on top of a cupboard, shining down onto the worktop. Any tips? What do you guys do if you have to take a picture after dark? (As we combine cooking for the blog with cooking family meals, some dark evening photography is unavoidable.)

...So back to the cake: the big difference in this version is that some of the wheat flour has been replaced with millet (bajri) flour, to give a closer texture without compromising on lightness. The orange peel is new too. We would have used coconut oil, but didn't have any at the time, so olive oil was used instead.

200g wholemeal flour
100g white self raising flour

100g millet flour (bajri)

5 tsps baking powder

175ml olive oil/ coconut oil

400ml soya milk

125ml agave nectar

140g chopped dates

70g chopped walnuts

about 20g finely shredded orange peel

• Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl, including the peel, half the dates and the walnuts.
• Beat the oil into the agave nectar and mix in the soya milk and the rest of the dates.
• Combine the wet and dry mixes, put into a prepared mould/ tin and bake at 170C in a preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, depending on your oven. (Our fan oven took 22 minutes.) Tip: use a square or rectangular mould/ tin rather than a loaf pan, as the cake will be shallower and bake more evenly.

Do let us know your verdict if you try this out. Would you like to see a gluten free version of this cake?