Delicious no-bake date cake

Browsing through some older photos, I found pics of this delicious date cake. In case you're still in need of an Xmas success recipe, here's your no-bake ticket to fame.

The recipe is from the Dutch 'Bagels & Beans' franchise, who serve this cake and are awesome enough to share the recipe:

• 500 gr dates (without pits and cut into slices)
• 250 gr dairy butter (Dutch: roomboter)
• 150 gr brown caster sugar (Dutch: bruine basterdsuiker)
• 1 hand of walnuts, chopped into fine pieces
• 1 tube of Marie biscuits, broken in pieces of about 1 cm (Dutch: een rol maria biscuitjes)
• 1 egg
• Caramel sirup (or praline/butterscotch sirup)
• Cocos flakes for decoration (I like to use quite a bit, as you can see on the photo ;) )

1. Carefully melt the butter
2. Add sugar and stir it thoroughly so that the suger dissolves a bit
3. Beat the egg with a whisk (Dutch: ei goed loskloppen met garde) and add to butter and sugar; while stirring it thoroughly, let it boil for a short while
4. Add two shots of caramel sirup, boil for a bit longer
5. Add dates, stir well and let boil for 1 minute
6. Add biscuits and walnuts, mix everything
7. Pour everything in a greased spring cake tin (Dutch: springvorm), flatten it well with the back of a tabletspoon, and let it cool for about 1 1/2 hour. The cake should be about 1 1/2 cm thick. When it has cooled, pour the cocos over it and enjoy!

And then... there was a new post

Yes!
It's been some time. My Industrial Design master education has started and I promptly did not have time for anything else anymore. Currently I'm three and a half month in and in a semi-permanent overload-mode since roughly week three, but just one week left until the Christmas holiday weeks so I hope to recover then.

In the mean time, I received the advise that it might not be such a fantastic idea to keep thinking that I just need to hang in there until the end of the school year, since by that time I might just as well have overloaded myself so much already that I won't be able to start with my thesis and such. Good advice. Difficult to follow since I do not want to get any study delay. I want to be done with school before my thirties dammit! XD

Anyway, part of that advise was also that I really really really should pay attention to my energy level. Fighting energy leaks and making 'energy bringers' a priority. All things I used to do in the past but that I have sort of managed to give up on, going into survival mode. So yeah. It really is time to get back to taking good care of myself. And what really gives me energy? Creating of course!

So, this weekend (the very first free weekend instead of max one free day since I started, I believe...) I took my time making something for lunch and even made a picture of it.

I'm so proud of myself! ;)
Because when being away from home for 12-14+ hours a couple of sandwiches are not gonna cut it, I sometimes boil rice in the weekend to freeze it in in daily portion bags. In the morning I just need to throw one portion in a frying pan with a little water, spices and perhaps also meat and veggies, and I have a real decent lunch to take with me.

This lunch was more extended since I had the time, so I added an union, half a bell pepper (Dutch: paprika), salami, turmeric (Dutch: kurkuma/geelwortel), cajun spice mix and a little soy sauce. It tasted divine on a cold afternoon.

Another project I've done some time ago was daubing decorating my solid green dummy notebook while in the train. After completing it the marker turned out to be wearing off on my hands so I put a plastic cover over it. That made it slightly less awesome but I can live with that.

Before you start commenting on my awesome creative skillzz, the pattern was made largely from an example ;). The notebook is almost full now, so I need to find a new one to start doodling on. Hurray! More doodle space!