An everyday cake – one I would love to eat every day.

May 19th, 2010

Continuing my newfound obsession with Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, and more specifically their book HomeBaking, I’ve been playing around with coarse semolina: an ingredient that I previously associated only with the porridge an old roommate of mine used to make. And while there’s nothing wrong with porridge, it’s hard to get as excited over a bowl of porridge as one might over a slice of a moist cake bursting with lemon.

My roommate, as I recall, didn’t bake, but I think if she’d tried this, she would have loved it. I love it so much that I’ve made it three times over the past month, though for different groups of people, and I’m looking forward to the next occasion I have to make it. I do bake the occasional multi-layered celebration cake – I’m working my way through Sky High! – but this simple cake is the kind of cake I like best.

That is, the kind of cake that you can eat with your hands as easily as you can eat it with a fork, and the kind of cake that needs nothing at all to make it more delicious.

Next time, I might add a cinnamon stick or a few crushed cardamom pods to the syrup that the cake is soaked with, or switch out the lemon for orange, or try mixing in some pistachios or walnuts or replace some of the semolina with ground almonds – there are so many possibilities, and every one of them delicious. But these changes would only be for the joy of experimenting with new flavours and textures.

That’s what I find most enjoyable about HomeBaking, and that’s one reason why I can’t wait to add it to my cookbook collection: I have always tried to be adventurous with the flavours and ingredients that I cook with, but I think my baking may have fallen into a rut. I can whip up a batch of biscuits or a pie crust from memory because I do it so often, but I don’t think that I ever made a syrup-soaked cake before this, though it’s a common thing to do in some parts of the world, just as I’d never thought to use coconut to add texture to banana bread.

It’s good to be reminded of the incredibly wide world of flavours and techniques, and Alford and Duguid do it so well.

Semolina 1-2-3 Cake

From HomeBaking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition Around the World by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

Ingredients:

For the cake:

2 cups coarsely ground semolina
2 Tbsp butter
1 1/2 cups yoghurt
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp lemon juice
zest of 2 lemons
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

For the syrup:

1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp rosewater
1/4 tsp orange flower water
2 tsp lemon juice
4 Tbsp butter

Notes: In the last batch I made, I replace the butter in the cake with an equal quantity of olive oil: I didn’t detect much difference in flavour (though possibly that’s because I didn’t use a really good-quality olive oil; I just wanted to see if it would save me the trouble of beating cold butter into the sugar), but it baked up just as nicely.

Preheat your oven to 350F and grease an 8 x 8 square baking pan with butter or oil.

Place the semolina, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.

Beat together the sugar and the butter until fluffy, then beat in the yoghurt. Stir in the lemon zest and juice. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients and fold together with a spatula until the dry ingredients are thoroughly blended in.

Pour the cake batter, which will be fairly thick, into the prepared baking pan and bake for approximately 25 minutes, until the top is golden and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

While the cake bakes, make the syrup: in a small saucepan, combine the sugar and water and bring to a boil over medium heat. As soon as this mixture boils, add the lemon juice, rosewater, and orange flower water. Stir the flavourings in and remove the pot from heat. Add the butter, cut into small chunks, and stir until it is melted. There will be about 1 1/2 cups of syrup. Let it cool to room temperature: I transferred mine to a liquid measuring cup and put it in the fridge, and just stirred the butter back in when I removed it, because it should be added to the cake very shortly after the cake is taken out of the oven.

Pour the syrup over the cake and let it sit until absorbed, at least one hour. I used a fork to poke a grid pattern into my cakes before adding the syrup, too, but I’m going to skip this step next time and see if the syrup is still absorbed as quickly.

This cake keeps really well if it is covered, but I think if it’s being kept for more than a couple of days it’s probably best to put it in the fridge; it was beginning to soften up quite a bit by the third day.