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!