Apricot and Pistachio Cake (Κέικ με φιστίκια και βερίκοκα)

I have a pleasant surprise here for you all. I'm presenting you with a Greek dessert that's not in my family's recipe book, I've never personally heard of nor tried this cake...until now.

I'm also excited to present this cake for this month's Royal Foodie Joust, hosted by Jenn the Leftover Queen. Think of it as our own Iron Chef but the twist here is that your dish must contain three ingredients, as chosen by the victor from the previous month.

For those interested, you have a few days yet in June to get your entry in.

This month's challenge was to prepare a dish that contained butter, apricots and ginger.Check!

This recipe comes from a Greek cookbook I have called "Food of the World - Greece" and this cake uses some of Greece's favourite ingredients and satisfies the criteria for this month's Joust and most importantly, it tastes great!

There are three components to this easy cake: the cake itself, the syrup and the topping. Before I go on with the recipe I would like to add that I surprised my toughest food critic - my mom!

Her reaction after trying this cake? "Where did you get this recipe and write it down for me"!

Apricot and Pistachio Cake (Κέικ με φιστίκια και βερίκοκα)

1/2 cup dried apricots
zest and juice of 1 large orange
1 stick of unsalted butter (room temp.)
3/4 cup icing sugar
4 eggs, separated
1 2/3 cups fine semolina flour
1 Tbsp. ground ginger
1 cup ground almonds

For the Syrup
3/4 cup Greek honey
1/3 cup orange juice
2 tsp. lemon juice

For the Topping
1 1/2 cups Greek Yogurt
2 Tbsp. icing sugar
couple of drops of almond extract
2/3 cup shelled, unsalted pistachio nuts, chopped

1. The evening before you want to bake this cake, put the apricots, zest and orange in a bowl and allow to soak for at least 12 hours (in the fridge). It's also good to place your yogurt in a mesh strainer(with a pot underneath to catch the water) and place that in the fridge overnight to strain.
2. The next morning, pre-heat your oven to 35oF and grease and line a round, 9 inch(23 cm) loose-bottomed cake pan. Transfer the apricots and juice to a food processor and blend until smooth.
   
3. Add the butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat together until light & fluffy. Add the egg yolk, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the semolina and ground almonds and mix well together and now add the semolina and ground almonds and mix well together. Fold in apricot puree.
4. Whisk the egg whites until stiff then fold into the batter mixture. Turn the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 45 minutes, or until the top is a light, golden brown.
5. In the meantime, make the syrup by adding the orange juice, honey and lemon juice into a small saucepan and bring to a boil, then simmer for 2-3 minutes. Keep the syrup just hot.
   
6. When has baked, let it stand in the pan for about 5 minutes before removing, then remove from the pan and place on a wire rack (with a plate underneath). Prick the top of the cake all over with a skewer and then spoon over the the hot syrup over the warm cake and leave on the wire rack to cool.
7. When the cake has cooled and all the syrup has been absorbed, place in the fridge until ready to serve. When you're ready to serve the cake, bring to room temperature and mix the icing sugar and almond extract with the strained yogurt.
   
8. Spread the yogurt over the cake and top with the chopped pistachio nuts.
   

Karydopita (Καρυδόπιτα)

Feeling a little nostalgic, I asked my mom to share her Karydopita recipe with me. Karydopita is a Greek walnut cake but the amazing thing about this dessert is that there's no flour in it!

I'm not a big fan of super-syrupy Greek desserts but this is one cake that requires a simple syrup to complete the moist yet gritty texture one gets in each bite.

Karydopita can be surely be found at a Greek bakery and you might have even been lucky enough to try a piece over at your Greek friend's house.

In keeping with my goal to show you more of my sweet side, I'm sharing this wonderful family recipe.

There are three components to this cake: wet ingredients, dry ingredients and the syrup. The syrup measurements ask for 2 cups of water and sugar. If you're going to serve this to a large group of guests and you know it'll be eaten that day, stick with 2 cups. If however, this cake is just for the family and it might be laying around for the week, pump up the syrup amounts to 3 & 3 cups. The cake will absorb the syrup and stay moist for the week.

Karydopita (Καρυδόπιτα)

Dry Ingredients
10 Tbsp. of ground rusk (Zwieback toasts are fine)
10 Tbsp. fine Semolina flour
10 Tbsp. of pounded walnuts
2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
2 tsp. baking powder

Wet Ingredients
10 eggs
10 Tbsp. sugar

Syrup
2 cups of water
2 cups of sugar
1 cinnamon stick
6-8 whole cloves
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 shot of Cognac
ground clove to taste
9" X 14" baking pan, buttered

Pre-heated 350F oven

1. Using your food processor, keep on pulsing your walnuts until you get a medium ground mixture of walnuts that are fine and some noticeable pieces of walnuts.
2. Add to a large bowl along with the remaining dry ingredients. Mix and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, add your sugar and eggs and beat with a hand mixer until you achieve a consistency of almost stiff peaks.
4. Fold the dry ingredients in small batches (DO NOT add all the dry at once). As the wet absorbs the dry, add more until all the dry ingredients are incorporated.
5. Carefully pour the cake batter into the baking pan and place in your preheated oven (middle rack) for 30-35 minutes.
6. In the meantime, make your syrup by adding the water, sugar, cinnamon stick, whole cloves and bring to a boil. Now simmer on medium heat for 10 minutes. Add the lemon juice and simmer for an additional 5 minutes. Add the Cognac and and some ground clove if desired (according to taste).
7. To complete your Karydopita correctly, the cake must absorb the syrup. There are two ways to do this: add cool syrup to just out of the oven cake or add hot syrup to room temperature cake. My mother prefers to add cooled syrup to a just out of the oven cake. The choice is yours. Time the two components. Remove the cinnamon stick and cloves and pour the syrup one ladle at a time time until all the syrup has been absorbed by the cake.
   
8. Cut your Karydopita into diamond shaped pieces and serve at room temperature. Store in a sealed container for up to one week.
   

Vassilopita

Happy New Year to everyone and health and happiness in 2008!

I'll make this brief as I have guests arriving soon but I'd like to share with you the background behind Greeks' cutting of the New Year's cake, as related by Nancy Gaifyllia from www.about.com:

As the New Year rolls over, Greek families all over the world will share the tradition of cutting the Vassilopita, our Greek New Year's cake. January 1st is the name day (saint's day) of Aghios Vassilis (St. Basil), the Greek Santa Claus, and the cake is named in his honor. While Christmas is a more solemn occasion, January 1st is filled with celebrations and the exchange of gifts.

However it's fixed, cutting the Vassilopita is a celebration of wishes for the new year.

Each Vassilopita is baked with a coin or medallion hidden inside which, according to tradition, will bring great good fortune in the new year to the person who gets it, so the cutting is all-important and the focus of great scrutiny! Traditionally, pieces are cut ceremoniously by the head of the household and allocated to the church (Holy Trinity and Virgin Mary), then the head of the household (male), his wife, their children (oldest to youngest), other family members by degree of relatedness, then guests.

Vassilopita

500 gr. unsalted butter
600 gr. sugar
650 gr. all purpose flour
12 eggs (whites & yolks separated)
2 shots of orange liquer
2 heaping Tbsp. of baking powder
zest of 2 oranges

Pre-heated 350F oven

1. Whip your egg whites into a meringue and reserve.
2. In a large bowl, use a mixer to blend the butter, sugar and add eggs, one at a time.
3. Add the liquer and the zest.
4. Add the flour and baking powder
5. Slowly fold the meringue into the batter.
6. Place a foil-wrapped coin randomly into the cake mix.
   
7. Bake on the middle rack for 50 minutes.
8. Let cool on a rack for an hour.
9. Make a paper stencil of the new year you're celebrating, place it on the cake and dust the top of the cake with icing sugar. Remove stencil and reserve to cut at New Year's.