Orange Date Cake

I love butter cakes, which are soft, fluffy and you cant stop at one. They are not as spongy and voluminous like some other cakes, yet make up some really delectable dishes. I guess it is the butter, which sort of calls out to you and says one more, one more.
This one is a basic butter cake, and allows for multiple variations with minor changes in procedure.

Ingredients (for Cake)
1 1/2 cups Self Raising flour (self raising flour is all purpose flour or maida with baking powder added in the ratio of 2 tsp baking powder to 1 cup of flour, sieve it together to mix both well)
125 g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup castor sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp grated orange rind
3/4 cup finely chopped dates.

Ingredients (for icing)
 90g cream cheese
2 tsp grated orange rind
1/2 cup icing sugar (powdered sugar if you dont have icing sugar)
2 tsp orange juice

Method
Cream butter, vanilla essence, orange rind and sugar in a small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time until combined.Stir 3/4 cups of finely chopped dates into the creamed mixture. Stir in half the sifted flour and half the milk, then stir in remaining flour and milk. 

Grease your pan (for the quantity mentioned here you will need a deep 20 cm round cake pan). Preheat your oven to 190degC / moderate / 375 deg F.

Spread the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake at 190 deg C for about 50 min. Check using toothpick technique to see if the cake is done. Once done, let it cool for 5 min before taking it out of the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack.

For the orange cream cheese frosting -
Beat the creamed cheese (when i dont have creamed cheese i use plain amul cheese spread in place of creamed cheese) until creamy. Beat in 2 tsp grated orange rind and then about half a cup of icing sugar. Add 2 tsp of orange juice (adjust quantity accordingly to make the frosting spreadable).

Spread on the cooled cake and enjoy!!!