Friday, April 27, 2012

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!

25 comments:

  1. Rasi, You did wonderful job in Nutmeg cake. They looks delicious. I loved both cake and Nazook.

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    1. on seconds thoughts i think i should have made nazook too :D

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  2. Cake looks simply irresistible, great job..

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    Replies
    1. thanks priya :).. its heartening to hear that from u!

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  3. Looks absolutely delicious Rasi...good one.

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  4. Love the flavor,looks wonderful,great job..

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  5. Its interesting to see various blogs post the same cake. Your cake looks good.

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    1. thats the interesting part.. how one recipe leads to different results right :)

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  6. good to see you in the Daring Bakers group Rasi...this one is my first challenge. Did both of them and the effort was well worth it. I liked the nazook more when compared to the cake.

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    1. Good to see u too there.. u have done a fab job :)

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  7. Love the texture and the combination of flavours. Delicious! Your family must be in for a treat every time due to your regular cooking challenges and blogging marathons huh ;) Lucky them!

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  8. Just now saw you in the DB Forum. Very happy to see you there. The cake looks so nice. Even we enjoyed it a lot here...

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  9. wow. cake looks simple awesome. love it

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  10. Looks very yummy, so this is how these cakes are made, couple of days back I had something, it neither looked like a cookie nor a cake, something in between like this, very interesting..

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  11. This sounds nice and yummy.thanks for sharing the recipe

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  12. yummy ncake Rasi....awesome bake...

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  13. Dear Rasi,

    The most awaited Roundup and the announcement of "Hall of Fame" members of Healthy Morsels is now online !
    Please accept our sincere and heartfelt thanks by collecting your badge from any of our blogs :)

    http://www.leckerandyummyrecipes.blogspot.de/2012/04/healthy-morsels-pregnancy-roundup.html
    http://www.schmetterlingwords.blogspot.de/2012/04/healthy-morsels-pregnancy-roundup.html
    http://www.tasteofpearlcity.blogspot.de/2012/04/healthy-morsels-pregnancy-roundup.html

    Your Healthy Morsels Team !

    ReplyDelete
  14. An award is waiting for you at my space..please drop in to collect it :)

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  15. Ha! And I've promised myself today I will start dieting! I guess I need to postpone it as I really need to have something similar to this recipe :)

    Hugs

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Really look forward to your opinions, comments & suggestions :)...Glad you took time to say something on my dish..Its a yay! moment for me :)