Dattelbrot

My sister really likes this date bread, dattelbrot in German, and as she is here this week visiting, I thought I'd make it. I like it too. I make it with honey dates, and these particular ones are from Iran, though you can use any date for this. For the vanilla sugar, I used Bourbon vanilla sugar from Dr. Oetker, it has some of the vanilla pod in there, so there are dark specks throughout the dough. You can use ricotta, or pressed cottage cheese, in place of the quark, if you can't find quark, though I find quark to be better tasting.

Dattelbrot
150 g Quark Cheese, liquid removed
6 tbsp Milk
6 tbsp Oil
75 g Sugar
3 tsp Vanilla Sugar
pinch salt
300 g Flour, sifted
3 tsp Baking Powder
milk (for brushing)
250 g pitted dates, cut into small pieces

Remove most of the liquid from the cheese (Note: weight of cheese is without liquid). Combine cheese, milk, oil, sugars and salt. Stir until smooth.

Combine flour and baking powder. Add half the flour mixture by tablespoonfuls to the cheese mixture. Knead in the rest of the flour mixture.

Roll out the dough into a rectangle of 30x40 cm size (the short end must fit into a bread pan).

Brush milk over the surface and then spread out the dates.

Roll up the dough by the short side and place into a greased bread pan. Score the top several times to a depth of 1/2 cm. Bake at 350F for approx. 45 minutes.