Armenian Nutmeg Cake

I am back with my Daring Baker's Challenge for April 2012! Moving from the bay area, we landed in the crossroads of Western Europe & Eastern Europe.. the land of Armenia :). The Daring Bakers' April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards : Nazook & Nutmeg Cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.

As i has done buns last time using Yeast. i thought will try the Nutmeg cake.. Anything that goes with tea or coffee i am in.. But the prob was both S & I are not fans of Nutmeg..Even i bake fruit cakes, i just add a pinch, so was a lil apprehensive.. so decided to reduce the recipe to half.. However i must say, this cake was quite delicious! 

Whats also interesting is, the way this cake is made..I am sure all you bakers out there will find it fascinating too :).. Here's to the recipe!

Ingredients

1.Milk - 1/2 cup

2.Baking Soda - 1/2 tsp

3.All Purpose flour/Maida - 1 cup

4.Baking powder - 1tsp

5. Butter - 3/4 cup or 1 1/4 stick

6. Walnuts - 1/4 cup

7.Brown Sugar - 1 cup

8. Nutmeg - 1/2tsp

9. Yogurt - 1/4 cup *

The original recipe called for 1 egg, which i replaced with Yogurt.. The original recipes makes a 9 inch cake!

Preparation Time!!

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 F

2. Mix the baking soda with milk and keep aside

3. In a bowl, sift the all purpose flour and baking powder. To this sifted flour, add brown sugar and mix well

4. To this add chopped butter and mix well with hands or using  pastry blender to form a crumbly mixture

5. In a bowl, take yogurt and to this add nutmeg powder and mix well. Then, add the milk which was kept aside (Step 2 ) and mix well to form a liquid

6. Now grease a pan ( I used 9 * 1 1/2 inch round pan) and take half of the crumbly mixture and put them in a pan. 

6a.Use hands/knuckles to press it down uniformly

6b. Add the yogurt liquid mixture to the remaining half of the crumbly mixture and whip well to form a liquid batter

7. Pour the liquid mixture over the solid mixture in the pan and sprinkle the walnuts over the cake top

8. Bake it for 35-40 minutes, till the top turns golden brown & can insert the toothpick to check, whether its done!

9. Cool it down completely & the slice it up and enjoy

Pointers

* Since i halved the ingredients and used a big tin to bake.. the thickness of my cake was very less..you can see the pic above

** Ever oven works different, so keep an eye on the cake after 25 minutes.. Once the top turns golden brown, time to remove :)

*** The Cake can be stored covered at room temperature for 2-3 days and can be frozen upto 3 months!