Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees F and grabbing your necessary ingredients to make sure you aren't forgetting anything.
Grab a mini bundt cake pan. Grease it using a spray oil and then lightly sprinkle flour across the pan.
Start by making the date paste! Add your pitted dates and 1.75 cups of water to a pot on the stove. Bring this to a boil and allow to boil for 3-5 minutes to soften the dates. Once done, let is cool slightly before blending it in a blender or food processor. Set aside as we will use this in the cake!
In a medium bowl attached to your electric mixer, combine butter, sugars and eggs and mix on medium speed until well combined, about a minute or two.
Add 1.5 cups of your date puree to this wet mixture along with .5 cup of heavy cream, continue to mix this for a minute or two until well combined.
In a separate small bowl on the side, combine flour, spices and baking powder and give this a quick whisk with a fork. Gradually add this to your wet mixture along with the orange extract and vanilla bean paste. Continue mixing for 2-3 minutes until everything is smooth and well combined.
Time to put the cakes together! You will need the candied pecans for this part, you can buy them pre-made or make them on your own by adding 1/4 cup of butter to a pan on the stove on medium heat with 1/2 cup chopped pecans, 2 tbsp brown sugar, 1 tbsp maple syrup and 1 tsp cinnamon. Stir this until melted and mixed and set in the fridge to cool before using.
In your greased mini bundt pans, sprinkle about a tbsp of chopped pecans in to the bottom and then add in your cake batter. My favourite way to get the cake batter into the mini moulds nicely is to use a piping bag, or a ziploc bag with the tip cut off!
Fill all 12 mini cake mould and then stick in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Repeat this process until you have used all of the cake batter, about 30 mini cakes.
For the toffee sauce, combine whipping cream, brown sugar, molasses, butter and allspice in a medium saucepan on the stove and bring this to a boil, stirring often. Once boiling, allow to boil for about 2 minutes then remove from the heat and let cool.
To put these together you will drizzle the toffee sauce over the bundt cakes when you are ready to serve and then top with aerosol whipped cream, which works perfect to fill these mini cakes!
You can store these in the fridge for 3 days before you add the whipped cream or toffee sauce, just add that right before serving. You could even freeze these and let them come to room temp before serving!
