Romanian Easter Cake

Easter in Romania is indeed a biggie and it surely is a lot about food. It comes after 7 weeks (!) of lent, during which Orthodox Romanians do not eat meat or animal related products. No cheese or dairy or eggs or nothing. Tough and basically vegan!

However, at the end of this tedious journey you get to finally celebrate Easter together with your family and enjoy all those delicious non-dietary dishes 🙂 I’m talking about the roasted Lamb, the famous savory lamb cake, dyed eggs of course and a huge variety of Easter cakes and sweet breads.

From all those delicacies I chose to bake my favorite Easter cake this year. It’s the first one to be finished from the Easter table when made by my mom: the cream Easter cake!

Lets start with the sandy dough, you’re going to mix the flour and the butter in a bowl until you get a sandy texture. Then add the egg, sugar, a bit of baking powder and a pinch of salt. Bring the dough together with your hand (or you can use a fork) until if forms a smooth ball. Finally cover the dough with plastic food wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

The cream filling is an art I hardly master, but here it goes. The most important ingredient is the cream itself, it should be organic heavy cream at around 25-30% fat. In Romania you usually get this quality at the farmers markets.

To make the filling you need to whisk the cream and eggs, then add sugar, vanilla essence or vanilla sugar, a bit of flour and a pinch of salt.

When all is ready grease a cake spring form with butter. Take the dough out of the fridge and knead it for a minute or two on a floured surface. Roll out into disk a half centimeter thick and wide enough to cover the base of the form. Another option is to also cover the sides, it depends on your taste.

Pour the filling into the spring form. Take the raisins and uniformly sprinkle them over the filling. Tip: in order to stop them from sinking to the base of the filling, you can shake them in a glass together with some flour. The flour film will keep them floating on the top of the filling. Alternatives to raisins can be candied fruits, figs or dates.

Now bake the cake at 170°C / 338°F for one and half hours or until the surface of the cake turns golden brown and stops wobbling when moved.

Let it cool down before taking the cake out of the spring form and store it into the fridge. Half an hour before serving take the cake out of the fridge.

For a self explanatory way to do it, watch the video below.

Enjoy your cake guys and Happy Easter!