As I'm sitting down to write this entry, it occurs to me that both of my grandfathers are tied to baking in some way. My dad's father works at a bakery, and my mom's father, when he was alive, was an avid baker, at least while I knew him. This entry marks part one in the great cake experiment, in which I attempt to recreate one of my grandfather's traditional cakes.
Now, this is difficult for several reasons.
1. I think he invented the recipe himself, or modified it from something that existed
2. I have no idea if this cake has a name, all I know is that it has a yeast dough. (My mom seems to think its some sort of bapka, but nothing I could find online seemed remotely like what I remember).
3. I obviously can't ask him for help and there's no one else who knows either.
So, all I have to go on is yeast dough, the fact that it had cinnamon, raisins and walnuts inside and what I remember it tasting like. It was a very particular kind of cake, probably not what springs to mind when you think of cake. If anything it was sort of in the coffee cake category, but I think the yeast dough made it unique. My grandpa and I used to joke that it was like a book, because you could open the layers almost like pages. In that sense it was somewhat like a jellyroll, but it was flatter than a roll and a little dry.
Since yeast dough is all that I had to go on, I figured I'd start there and try a recipe. I looked through a bunch and looked at the pictures, none of which looked right. The one I found on Baking for the Cure seemed at least to have somewhat of the right look to it, so I decided to give it a shot and modify the filling as I saw fit. The instructions on shaping it weren't too specific, so I had the idea that I would try and spread it out over a sheetpan and then fold it over in layers.
This didn't really go as planned because the dough was extremely sticky. The whole thing was a bit of a mess actually. Maybe the yeast didn't activate properly because the dough didn't seem to rise as much as it was supposed to at all. My mom suggested that it might be too cold, but even placing it closer to the oven didn't seem to help. I also was short one egg. I don't know how this affected the dough as a whole, but I tried to compensate by adding more liquid. The whole thing was springy and sticky, even though I tried to flour it down.
The recipe calls for cutting the dough into four equal parts so I tried a little something different with the shaping of each part. I couldn't get the flat shape I wanted so at first I did more of a roll and then I was able to flatten a few out a bit more. I flattened the dough as much as I could then buttered and sprinkled on a mix of sugar and cinnamon and then raisins. Two of the loaves got nuts as well.One tiny little ball of dough I turned into a tiny bite sized cake bite.
They did not come out flat at all, but they did end up being delicious. As promised by the recipe, they also made the house smell amazing! The yeasty taste was there to some extent but it was not at all like my grandpa's cake. My mom suggested that there was too much fat in the cake, and that my grandpa likely wouldn't have used butter, so I may need to find a substitute. My cakes also came out so pale, except the bottoms which burnt. I remember his cakes being a dark brown, and having almost a flaky dryness to them. My cake came out almost as a cross between bread and cake.
I'm going to have to do more research into this project and I will keep updating as I experiment. If this cake sounds familiar to anyone then I'd be glad to hear your ideas on how to make it.
No comments:
Post a Comment