Date and walnut cake

Ingredients:

 500g dates
10ml (2 tsp) bi-carbonate of soda
500ml (2 cups) boiling water
375g butter
500ml (2 cups) brown sugar (trea-cle)
10ml (2 tsp) vanilla essence
4 eggs
250g (2 cups) cake flour
1250g (2 cups) self raising flour
10ml (2tsp) baking powder
Pinch of salt
125ml (½ cup) walnuts

Directions:

Place dates in a bowl and add the bicarbonate of soda. Cover dates with 2 cups of boiling water and allow cooling. In a separate bowl cream butter, sugar, vanilla essence and slightly beaten eggs. Add flours, salt and baking powder to creamed mixture and blend thoroughly. Lastly add dates (with water) and nuts mix thoroughly. Pour batter into two lined, greased loaf pans and bake for 1½ hours at 300f/150c until skewer inserted comes out clean.