My Mother's Marble Chocolate and Vanilla Ring Cake Recipe

July 06, 2023 by tina oblak in Adriatic Recipe, All year round recipe, baking, breakfast, brunch, Central Europe cakes, Central European recipes, dessert, Eastern Europe cakes, Eastern European recipes, easy baking, easy cakes, Easy recipe, home baking, Istrian cuisine, Istrian dish, Istrian food, Istrian gastronomy, Mitteleuropean cuisine, Mitteleuropean recipes, Mitteleuropean food, pudding, Rustic dish, simple recipe, Slovenian cuisine, Slovenian food, Slovenian gastronomy, Snacks, Sweet Things

Perhaps, you know the old adage, which actually goes back to Tudor times, ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it (too)?’ Well, with this recipe – you can! All your baking dilemmas, should I go for a chocolate cake this time, or for a vanilla one, are solved with this one recipe – you can have both in one cake!

This chocolate and vanilla sponge cake is a classic childhood sweet treat. It is moist with a soft and fluffy texture, it looks pretty, and is still elegant, since the light and dark batter is blended lightly together giving it a marble appearance, and so, hence its name, marble cake, or it is sometimes called a zebra cake, due to its zebra-striped pattern (skunks are also striped, but I supposed that isn’t a very appealing name for a cake). It is also known as a ring cake or a Bundt cake, especially in the United States.

So, this cake delivers on appearance and flavour every single time, and if you want to impress your family and friends, this is the cake to go for. It is very easy to make and you can whizz it up in no time.

It originated in Germany, where it is still very popular, from a Kugelhopf, a two-coloured sweet yeast bread.

This impressive cake has been frequently baked in Austrian households and other European countries, including in Slovenia (Šarkelj) where it represents one of the most frequently baked weekend sweet treats and it is enjoyed for breakfast as well, there is no wrong time to eat it!

This was a regular bake in my house when I was a small girl, all you need is a few simple ingredients and a few simple steps to follow, I promise you, you will think twice before reaching out for the store-bought version, and here it is, my mother's recipe.

Recipe

Ingredients

4 medium eggs, room temperature
250g caster sugar
1 Tsp vanilla extract
100ml milk, room temperature
100ml sunflower oil, room temperature
250g all purpose white flour (plain flour), sifted
16g baking powder
2 Tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
dusting sugar/vanilla powder sugar for dusting, optional

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C static or equivalent.

Grease well with butter or oil a ring mould or a bundt cake tin. Make sure you cover every nook and cranny (alternatively you can use a 20cm cake tin or a 900g loaf tin, grease and line with baking parchment)

Dust with flour, shake off and tip out the excess.

Put in the mixing bowl the eggs and the sugar, and beat well until the mixture becomes golden pale in colour.

Add the milk, oil and vanilla extract, mix well.

Start adding, one spoonful at the time of sifted flour together with the baking powder.

Divide the batter, spoon half of the batter in a separate bowl.

Add in one half of the batter sifted cocoa and mix well.

Pour the white mixture into the base of the prepared ring mould first. Then pour the chocolate mixture on top.

Gently swirl a little with the knife.

Bake for about 35 minutes or until the cake has shrunk from the sides of the tin and is well risen, the top of the cake should ‘spring back’ when lightly pressed with your fingertips.

Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes.

Turn out the cake and finish cooling on a wire rack.

Dust with icing sugar or vanilla icing sugar and serve.

My mum's easy Pear Traybake Recipe

Beans and Sardines

September 14, 2022 by tina oblak in Adriatic Recipe, All year round recipe, Autumnal dish, Autumnal recipe, baked dish, baking, bite-sized nibbles, breakfast, Central Europe cakes, Central European recipes, child friendly dish, dessert, easy baking, easy cakes, Easy recipe, Finger food, home baking, Istrian cuisine, Istrian food, Istrian gastronomy, pudding, Rustic dish, simple recipe, Slovenian cuisine, Slovenian food, Slovenian gastronomy, Small bites, Snacks, sweet course, sweet finger food, sweet nibbles, Sweet Things

This pear tray bake is made with simple, everyday, ingredients found in your pantry, it is moist, light, soft, super delicious, and incredibly easy and quick to prepare. You will want to make it over and over again, and it will become your number one recipe for a traybake.

This recipe covers it all when it comes to sweet treats, it is perfect for any occasion and it can be enjoyed any time of the day. You can serve it at room temperature or cold as a snack, it goes really well with tea and coffee, it can be made in advance and taken to the picnics; but, it also can be equally served warm as an elegant dessert when “dressed up” a bit and accompanied with cream, whipped cream, fromage frais, yoghurt, or a good quality vanilla ice cream or gelato.

This sumptuously moist pear traybake is incredibly popular back home on the Slovenian coast and baked in the households on a regular basis all year round. In fact, the idea behind this traybake is to use the same basic sponge recipe and add different fresh seasonal fruits or their combinations, so you always end up with a slightly different cake. And of course, using jarred or tinned fruit in this recipe is perfectly fine too.

In the autumn you can use for example pears, apples, plums and blackberries and add ground cinnamon and clove and orange zest to enhance that characteristic autumnal flavours, on the contrary, in the spring and summer months the use of peaches, cherries, nectarines and lemon zest will add freshness to the sponge base.

I am sharing here my mum's recipe for a tray bake she used to make, and still does, it will become a staple in your sweet things repertoire to bake.

Ingredients

Serves 12

3-4 ripe pears (about 500g), tinned pears also work well in this recipe
lemon zest and juice of ½ small unwaxed lemon
3 medium eggs (room temperature)
150g caster sugar
130g plain white all purpose flour
6g baking powder (1 Tsp)
5 Tsp neutral tasting oil (75ml)
½ Tsp vanilla extract
¼ Tsp ground cinnamon, optional
¼ Tsp ground cloves, optional
icing sugar, for dusting

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4.

Lightly grease a tray bake or roasting tin, approx 30 x 23cm (12 x 9), then line the base with baking parchment.

Peel, core and thinly slice the pears. Transfer into a bowl, add lemon zest and squeeze the lemon juice over them. This will help the pears from turning brown and discolouring but also adds a bit of of extra flavour.

Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl, add the sugar and beat with a free-standing or hand-held mixer for about 7 minutes or until the mixture has thickened, becomes slightly pale in colour and foamy.

Add sifted flour and baking powder along with oil, vanilla extract, and ground cinnamon and clove, if using. Stir with a wooden spoon to incorporate well all the ingredients.

Add pears to the mixture and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula.

Transfer the mixture into the tray.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 40-45 minutes or until the cake is golden, firm to the touch and and when inserting the knife into the centre should come out clean.

Leave to cool then turn out, remove the parchment, dust with a bit of icing sugar and cut into 12 pieces.

You can also serve it warm as a dessert with cream, whipped cream, fromage frais or a good quality vanilla ice cream or gelato.

Just a thought

In this traybake you could use other fruit such as apples, peaches, nectarines, cherries or plums or a combination of the fruits that your prefer, and all of the fresh fruits can be replaced by jarred or tinned alternative.

You can freeze this tray bake for up to three month.

Wine suggestion

Moscato di Trani DOC Dolce Naturale "Dulcis in Fundo" 2019 - Torrevento

Austrian style Curd Cheesecake Recipe

Beans and Sardines

February 16, 2022 by tina oblak in Adriatic Recipe, baked dish, baking, celebratory desserts, dessert, Easy recipe, festive bakes, festive dessert, festive sweet things, pudding, Sweet Things, easy cakes, no flour cakes, home baking, easy baking, Central Europe cakes, Eastern Europe cakes

This Austrian style Curd Cheesecake is a sweet dessert, delicious in its simplicity, consisting of one main layer mixture of curd cheese or ricotta, flavoured with sugar, lemon zest, vanilla extract, eggs and the raisins that have been luxuriously soaked in dark rum.

This cake is quite moist, therefore refreshing and perfect for any occasion, it is very easy to make and a great recipe to keep in the repertoire for cakes that require minimum effort but deliver maximum satisfaction.

In Slovenia, where I come from, curd cheese, in Slovenian called skuta (also referred to as farmer's cheese or baker's cheese) has always been a very popular and commonly used ingredient in baking.

For this recipe, you can easily replace curd cheese for ricotta, which is what I used to do when I first arrived in England, and struggled to find curd cheese, but it is now available these days in most bigger supermarkets or Polish food stores.

My mother and my maternal grandmother would make this cake very often, this is proper home made rustic baking, and I am sharing here this nostalgic and special family recipe.

Give it a go and try this wonderful cake, but please do remember, despite the temptation, it is really important to completely cool down the cake before cutting it into slices.

Ingredients

Serves 10

120g butter, softened
200g caster sugar
4 eggs, separated
1kg curd cheese or ricotta
100g semolina
3 Tsp vanilla bean extract or seeds of one vanilla pod
finely grated lemon zest of 2 unwaxed lemons
120g raisins or sultanas
4 Tbsp dark rum or lukewarm water (for soaking the raisins)
icing sugar for dusting

Method

Place the raisins in a small bowl, pour dark rum or lukewarm water over them and let them soak and plump up for about 30 min.

Preheat the oven to 200C static or equivalent. Lightly grease a 23cm springform tin or loose-bottomed tin and line the base with baking parchment.

Put the softened butter and sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Beat together until light and creamy.

Start adding to the sugar and butter mixture the egg yolks, one at a time, making sure the egg yolk is fully absorbed before adding the next one.

Add grated lemon zest, curd cheese or ricotta, semolina and vanilla extract and mix well all the ingredients.

Drain the raisins, remove excess liquid, and add them to the mixture.

Put the egg whites in a separate large bowl, add a pinch of salt and whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry.

Fold very gently and lightly into the mixture.

Turn the mixture into a prepared tin.

Bake the cake in a preheated oven for 30min on 200C then lower the temperature to 180C and bake further for another 30min. Cake should be golden in colour on the surface and firm to the touch.

If halfway through baking time the cake is browning too fast, cover the top of the cheesecake loosely with the aluminium foil, to prevent the top from becoming too brown.

When the cake is baked, turn off the oven but leave the cheesecake in the oven for about 1 hour allowing it to cool a bit.

Take the cake out of the oven and allow it to cool completely.

Loosen the sides of the cake, using a palette knife if needed, and remove the tin.

Invert the cheesecake, then remove the base of the tin and the baking parchment.

Turn the cake back the right way up.

Dust with sifted icing sugar just before serving. This cake is very moist and the icing sugar will dissolve if you dust the cake too soon, no permanent damage though.

Wine suggestion

Montefalco Sagrantino Passito DOCG 2015 - Lungarotti