Ciasto Drozdzowe (Yeast Cake)

Yeast cakes are traditional, delicious cakes in Poland. Long-term traditions developed numerous recipes: cakes with fruit, raisins, sugar, chocolates or jams. This recipe is for the most basic, but yummy cake. It might seem that a yeast cake needs long time to be made, but in fact, it’s not hard, and most of time it needs for resting and growing. Simple but nice! The best is served still warm, with butter, jam or glass of milk.

Prep time: 20 min

Waiting time: several hours

Cook time: 50 min

Serves: 30

Ingredients:

Cake

Glass of milk

100 g yeast (dry or fresh)

1 glass of sugar

1 kg flour

4 eggs

3 tablespoon of oil

1/3 butter

Glass of raisins

Crumble

200g flour

200g sugar

100g butter

Method:

1.     Warm up ½ glass of milk, add yeast and stir as long as they melt. Add 1/3 glass of sugar and ½ glass of flour. Cream them altogether.

2.     Cover the mixture with a tea towel and leave in a warm place for 2 or 3 hours so it can grow. It should get three times bigger.

3.     Melt butter, add it into the mixture, add slightly whisked eggs, oil, the rest of sugar, milk and sieved flour.

4.     Mix all the ingredients together with your hands for about 10 minutes to achieve a cream mixture. You might find the mixture very sticky and maybe too watery, but don’t worry, that’s how it should be.

5.     Leave the mixture for about 1-2 hours to rest and grow.

6.     Soak some raisins in hot water, and add and mix them into the mixture when it finishes resting.

7.     Put the mixture into a well-grossed tin (about 14”x10”). The cake doubles its size while baking. You can use two separate loaf tins, or use half of the ingredients to have a smaller cake. Bake it for about 50 minutes in the pre-warmed to 180C oven.

8.     When the cake is in the oven, prepare the crumble: put flour and sugar into a bowl, add melted butter, and mix them all together. Spread it over the cake when it’s baking, about 15 minutes before taking it out of the oven.

9.     When the cake is ready take it out of the oven. Check if it’s ready: stick a little wooden skewer in the middle of the cake, if the little hole stays, the cake is ready, if the pastry is still watery, put it back into the oven for another 10 minutes.

10. You can cover your cake with sugar icing (icing sugar melted in hot water). The cake is delicious served warm, with jam or butter, or just on it’s own. Yummy!