Jam traybake - kavart tészta

 

Going through all the mess in the house, another recipe book surfaced, this time one with my favorite recipes from my grandma's cakes, in fading ink. I guess it is time to retry them all and digitize them before they fade forever.

The simplest of all is a traybake, made with few ingredients and jam, an easy and cheap one from the good ol' communist days of empty shelves. 

The flavor resembles that of a banana bread without the bananas, but if you have some laying around bananas can be added. I did.

I also reduced the sugar amount in the recipe from 300 g to 200 g knowing that I'll add the bananas, plus, due to over the 22 years of low sodium & lower sugar cooking we would probably not like it with that much sugar/flour ratio.

Ingredients for the basic cake (really good on its own)

2 large eggs

200 g (1 cup) sugar (the original recipe asked for 300 g sugar)

300 g (2 cups) flour

1 lemon zest & juice

2 heap-full tbsp of jam (I added strawberry to make a strawberry-banana bread, but anything works very well), it would be 4 tbsp measured strictly by American tbsp standards

1 tsp cinnamon (optionally add cloves, and cardamom, too)

1 tsp vanilla essence 

pinch of salt

250 ml (1 cup) milk

1 tsp  baking soda (you can add 1/2 tsp baking powder + 1/2 tsp baking soda if you don't like the taste of one or either of them in a cake)

1/2 cup flavorless cooking oil

Optional (my grandma's recipe did not ask for any, but I used to sprinkle walnuts anyway)

bananas (I mixed in 3 bananas that I had on the counter, overripe to be eaten as is)

walnuts, pecans (1/2 - 1 cup), preferably soaked (I didn't have any pre-soaked nuts, so I just chopped about 1 cup of pecans and divided it on top of the two breads)

Preheat the oven to 360F, and line a 22cm x 35 cm tray (9" x 13") or two banana bread trays (5" x 9") with parchment paper, or grease with butter and sprinkle with flour to prevent sticking.

Sift the flour, and mix in the salt and the dry spices, and add the baking powder to the flour mix, and / or the baking soda to the milk.

Whisk the eggs together with the sugar, add vanilla, the 2 tbsp of jam, the lemon zest and juice, 

At this point you can mix in the banana, if you add any.

Then pour in the milk (with the baking soda), add the cooking oil, mix thoroughly. Sift in the flour, and mix for 5 minutes until smooth (grandma's recipe asked to be mixed for 10 minutes, but I don't know if that is really necessary, especially with a stand mixer).

Mix in the soaked, drained nuts. I like them soaked because they will not absorb the moisture from the cake. If you did not soak them n worries, just sprinkle them on top of your batter. That's what I actually did, I very much like some crunchy nuts on top of my cake 😄.

Bake on the middle oven shelf for about 40 minutes until golden brown.

Remove tray(s) to a rack, cover with a kitchen towel, and let it rest for about 10 minutes. You can then remove it from the tray if you wish, or cut them into smaller, easier to store, blocks if necessary, or just leave them in the tray until serving. As it stands the moisture dissipates thorough the cake and makes it wonderfully moist, and I prefer to let it sit for about 2 hours (at least) after baking.

Do not cut into tiny serving sizes before you are actually serving them, they dry out much faster. I like the IKEA cake plate with cover, keeps the cakes moist and it looks awesome, too. Stores without any issues for 2 days at room temperature. It doesn't last longer in our family.

Bon appetite!

Non plus ultra - tea linzer

Don't ask me where the name comes from, I just decided to rehabilitate Grandma's recipes and this is how she called them. I remembered that they melt in mouth and are just a bite each.. :)
It has again a linzer like pastry, with meringue on top, and I decided to adjust the sugar portion in the dough to make it less sweet, as originally had 150 g sugar. Huhh.. That would have been a real torture for me..
Even with the adjusted recipe is still VERY sweet however, so you want to have a sour jam inside to balance the flavor. Mine were very sweet, both the apricot and raspberry, but I was lucky to find the blackcurrant marmalade and they became edible sweet :). The kids preferred the ones with raspberry, so it is really up to your own preferences.
I also think with smaller scoops of meringue the sweetness was more tolerable (just a personal taste) than with large scoops, and when you ate them they really fit in your mouth in just one bite.
Large scoops looked better though :), if you like sweet cookies just go ahead and place a nice meringue scoop that covers the cookie, but be prepared that if you don't finish them in one bite when you eat the meringue will fall apart and make a mess :D.
Makes at least ~70 cookies (some halves were eaten unglued and uncounted..)

Ingredients:
300 g pastry flour (10.5 ounce), all-purpose flour is good, but NOT bread flour
200 g butter (7 ounces, 1 3/4 stick) (Grandma had 300 lard in her recipe, but I replaced the lard with butter and also reduced the amount, you can try with 300g if you wanna experiment or find the cookies too chewy)
2 egg yolks
100 g sugar (3.5 ounce)
1 bag vanilla sugar or 1 tsp homemade vanilla sugar

Meringue
2 egg whites, use eggs left at room temperature for ~ a day
130 g sugar
1/2 tsp vinegar (optional)

Serving
a sour jam/marmalade like apricot jam, (raspberry marmalade, blackcurrant marmalade)

Mix all the ingredients, roll it out very thin (~3mm) and cut roughly 3 cm (1.2  inch) circles. The dough can be quite sticky, add some flour if needed, and use flour beneath and on top when rolling them out (or a baking sheet).
Make the meringue from the egg whites with the sugar. If you want a successful egg white, start whipping the eggs and only when starts to thicken add slowly the sugar. Whip it well, until you remove the spoon and the peaks can stand up. Place small tops on each piece of cookie, easier if you use a piping (pastry) bag.
Bake them at 175 C (350 F) for 20 min. I suppose 180 works fine as well, take them out couple of minutes earlier.

Glue two of them together with apricot jam, let the jam soften the cookies overnight in a cold place (not the fridge though). Until the cookie softens and they get glued together the two cookies might slide, so watch how you place them on the plate.
Enjoy.

Looking at my recipes I think if someone would describe the Hungarian cake-cookie delis it would definitely have one of the following: plum marmalade, apricot jam, sour cherry, walnuts or chestnuts :). Exception is maybe the madártej.