Why is this man smiling?
We are at the half way point between the end of Succot and the beginning of Hanuka. Today we announced the upcoming month of Kislev and on the 25th of Kislev we light the first candle of Hanuka.
What has that got to do with my smiling man? Well, he holds a cake made with the grated rind of an etrog (citron fruit). Since this year was shmita we had to treat our Israel grown etrogim with special respect and we couldn't just let them dry up as usual. We were advised to use them in food. So we did. I made a cake like this right after the holiday (also many of my neighbors 'donated' their etrogim to the effort and received a small cake in return). But we put away 1/2 a cup of grated rind in the freezer and today we are having a festive half-way mark before Hanuaka as the month of Heshvan (sometimes called mar-heshvan or bitter heshvan for lack of holidays) wanes.
Here's the recipe:
Cream:
1/2 a cup of margarine with 1 1/2 cups of sugar then add 4 eggs (beating them in one at a time)
Stir in:
100 grams (4 oz) grated semi-sweet chocolate
1/2 cup finely shaved citron peel (the recipe I took it from says you can also use candied orange or lemon peel)
Add:
2 1/3 cups of sifted flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
alternatively with one cup of water or orange juice
Beat until smooth.
Bake in a moderate oven.
I usually bake this in loaf pans but this time I wanted to put half of it away so I used two small heart shaped pans which I have around. It also comes out nice in a bundt pan.
Usually I serve it with powdered sugar on top but the man found the other chocolate bar and melted it on top of the cakes. It tasted good but in my opinion the cake is sweet enough without the chocolate icing.
5 comments:
by occam's razor - because he's married to you !
KT
amerbro
esrog cake? never heard of it. I thought the only thing people did with esrogs was make jelly....
Nice that you put the man to use as a model!
We should feast on it together with waffles!
I love this, i have been trying to figure out what to do with ours. One year i tried to make jelly but it didn't turn out so well. I t was more like sugar syrup.t
amerbro - I meant besides that!
Rafi - That's why I posted about it because it's different. Maybe that's why this is the first time I posted a recipe. I make nice potroast but not anything that you'd need my recipe for.
Batya - I did put one in the freezer...
Sheva - Thanks for commenting, I was thinking about trying to make jam but we don't eat jam (I used to buy jam on Pesach for my father-in-law and every year he'd have 2 or 3 spoonfuls and then the following Adar I would throw away the rest of the jar so now he eats something else when he comes on Pesach)and it looks like a very time consuming project. Sooooo, I found this. Happy to share. Except for grating the rind (which the man does) it's not much different than most other cakes in terms of effort. B'tayavon!
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