Date Squares (or Pie in my Case) Recipe - My Review

Hi Hive,

For the last few weeks I have been in charge of preparing lunch and dinner for my wife and daughter. As for me, since I am currently following Ramadan and fasting I only eat dinner. This means that every now and then I need to check what's available in the fridge and replenish accordingly.

Every time, I opened it, I could see this plastic container taking some space. A few month ago, our friend @millycf1976 left the Philippines and gave us some of her things. Amongst those were some dates and this is what has been sitting idle in the fridge, taking space and bothering me more every day.

A few days ago, I got fed up and thought that I should make use of them otherwise they would be staying in there forever. So the first thing I did is to look on the internet for recipes using dates. The first one that came up was for some Date Squares.

With a high rating score I assumed this was a good recipe to follow so I checked the list of ingredients. One of the main ones, apart from dates is oats and guess what?! @millycf1976 also gave us some of those.

I ticked the entire list of ingredients and decided to go ahead. Only difference though, I would make it as a pie instead of squares.
I wanted to document it with pictures along the way so I could share my experience here and then provide my feedback on the recipe.

Ingredients

I followed the list of ingredients to the dot:

Filling

425 g dates, pitted
250 ml water
30 ml lemon juice
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda

Crisp

175 g quick-cooking oats
150 g unbleached all-purpose flour
160 g brown sugar
1/4 tsp baking powder
170 g semi-salted butter, softened

As per the recipe, I started with the filling.
All the dates were seeded so I spent quite a bit of time going through them one by one and removing it.
I mixed the dates with the water, lemon juice and sugar in a pot and started cooking it on medium fire. Once it reduced and looked like a mashed date compote I added the baking soda. The reaction was instant and the whole concoction started foaming. I wasn't expecting that 🙂.
I stirred on low fire for a while and then turned off the gas and let it sit idle while preparing the base and top of the pie.

Then I put all the ingredients (oats, flour, sugar, baking powder and butter) in a bowl and started mixing them together. If I had read the instructions properly, I would have added the butter after everything else was well mixed. Anyways, it turned out OK nonetheless.

First, I transferred half of the mixture to my pie tray and covered the bottom (which I had already covered with some parchment paper) by flattening it and then compacting it with my hands.

I poured the entire content of the date mash on top of the oats layer and tried as best as I could to flatten it.

Then came the second half of the oats. Again, I flattened it as best I as could without putting too much pressure on it or it would go through the layer of dates.

In the oven for 55 minutes at 180 °C, and voila the result.

Conclusion:

So my take on this recipe, as well as @discoveringarni's, is that it's way too sweet and it would have been better with only half of the dates' filling. After a few bites we felt full already and had enough of the dates' taste. If I was to re-do this recipe, I would for sure only use half of the quantity of sugar, maybe even only 1 third and also half of the quantities for the filling. I'd keep the amount of butter though. I know it's unhealthy but it is required to make sure the oats are well bound together and also for the taste 🙂.

If ever you try it, tell me what you changed and how the result was.

Thank you and bon appetit!