To celebrate a lot of recent good news, I wanted to make something special. I wanted to combine something Cypriot with something modern, so I decided to bake a “baklava” inspired cake. I am on Instagram a lot (how much is too much?) and saw a cake that one of my Instagram friends posted – Hannah who runs the beautiful blog called “Nothing But Delicious“. I then saw another snapshot of the same beautiful cake by my other Instagram friend Julie who is creating a fantastic foodie app called “Feedfeed“. So I decided to try Hannah’s recipe as the base, and tweak the ingredients a bit to add a Cypriot punch (and also I can’t find good buttermilk in Cyprus, so I had to substitute something for it!). This cake is a really nice treat. The cake is moist, and has a light vanilla and cinnamon flavour. It’s not overly sweet, and actually makes for a nice stand alone cake with tea. But if you are looking to make a show-stopping cake for a special event, then it is not difficult to make this into a layer cake. In fact, Hannah’s instructions were perhaps the easiest cake instructions I have ever followed. I won’t repost Hannah’s recipe below, I will simply link to her recipe for those wanting to make it. What I will post below is the small adjustments I made to make this into a “baklava” inspired cake. What I love about this cake is how well the orange blossom pairs with the pistachios and cinnamon. You have to be careful when using a flavour like orange blossom water. It’s a beautiful flavour, but it can easily overpower a lot of other flavours like vanilla. So the key is to not use too much of it, and to use it with the right flavours. It pairs wonderfully with flavours such as nuts, butter and cinnamon. And so combining them together in a cake made perfect sense to me (though many people did just ask me why I didn’t just make baklava). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this cake as much as I did. Also note that I made a “mini-cake” so that I cut Hannah’s recipe in half when I made the cake you see in the pictures in this post. I have adjusted the measurements below as though you were following her recipe exactly (i.e. to make a larger cake, not a mini-cake like I made.)
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Level of Difficulty: 3/5
Preparation Time: about 2 hours
Cooking Time: about 30 minutes
Makes 1 large layer cake
For The Ingredients & Recipe:
Follow Hannah’s Buttermilk Cake Recipe here, and make the small changes I note below to make this into a “Baklava” Sour Cream Cake.
For the Baklava Inspired Cake:
Follow Hannah’s Buttermilk Cake Recipe, but, instead of buttermilk use 1 cup of sour cream and add a heaped 1/2 tsp of cinnamon when you add the vanilla to the batter.
For the Baklava Inspired Frosting:
Follow Hannah’s Buttermilk Cake Recipe, but, in Cyprus I found that I needed a little bit more butter in relation to the icing sugar specified to make this a softer-buttery frosting which is what I preferred. I only needed about 3 cups of icing sugar, and my frosting was perfect. I also did not add the bourbon, and instead added 1/2 tsp of orange blossom water. Orange blossom water is delicious, but it is a very strong flavour and so I always add it with caution. Try the icing once you have added 1/2 tsp and if you want more of a punch, add another 1/2 tsp orange blossom water. But I think 1/2 tsp tastes good.
To Assemble the Baklava Cake:
Follow Hannah’s Buttermilk Cake Recipe, but sprinkle ground pistachios in the middle layers of the cake, and also decorate the top of the cake with ground pistachios.
for more recipes and food talk visit www.afroditeskitchen.com
