This is a very delicious Eurasian cake that isn’t really very easy to bake, but worth every effort to make. The cake is made with semolina, lots of butter, ground almond and many eggs – not the healthiest cake to have but really, really delicious!
Ingredients:
- Semolina: 500g
- Butter: 500, softened, cubed
- Egg yolk: 225g (from about 10 medium eggs)
- Sugar: 400g
- Egg white: 375g (from about 10 medium eggs)
- Ground almond: 400g
- Baking powder: 6 tsp
- Vanilla essence: 1 tbsp
- Brandy (optional): 4 tbsp
Method:
- Preheat oven at 140 degrees Celsius.
- Whisk semolina with butter till soft, slightly fluid and pale in colour. Remove and set aside.
- Whisk egg yolks with sugar on high speed for 5min till pale and creamy. Remove and set aside.
- Separately whisk egg whites on high speed till stiff peaks form.
- Fold semolina mixture and half of egg whites into whisked egg yolks with a spatula.
- Fold in ground almond and remaining egg whites into mixture.
- Fold in baking powder, vanilla essence and brandy till mixture is even.
- Place greased paper into baking tray. Pour batter into baking tray.
- Bake for 75min.
- Leave to cool before unmoulding.
Tricks:
- The original recipe called for 500g raw almonds to be soaked in hot water and grounded without its skin. I used 400g of ready-made ground almond instead to save on all these extra efforts required.
- I also reduced the amount of sugar by 100g (original was 500g) and the cake still tasted all lovely and sweet!
Serving:
2 round cakes (it’s really a lot!)