My husband was describing something to me the other day and I had this odd memory flash of a dessert that I am now craving, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. The memory was so odd that now I’m not even sure if it was real. I’ve googled and had no luck, so I’ll try you guys.
Almond may be part of the flavor somehow, but it’s basically a very thin, coarse and wet cake like dessert. I think it’s layered. It’s VERY wet. IT IS NOT A TRES LECHES cake. I think it may be an Italian dessert.
No, not Tiramisu, I do love that though. Nothing suggested quite fits it yet. You could literally suck the juice out of the cake itself and I think the juice was fairly clear in color. The cake I think is yellowish. The cake holds a lot of liquid. It’s actually heavy.
OP did describe the stuff in terms of being thin and layered, which plus honey and almonds is pretty much dead-on.
(I admit to being biased by dint of my preschooler refusing to even try baklava, finally going for a tentative forkful, and delightedly exclaiming, “Oh, it’s cake!”)
Aside from the part about it being layered, it sounds like an English dessert, treacle sponge - basically a sponge cake soaked in syrup. They are sold in cans (tins) in the UK as well as the “international” sections of large supermarkets in the US.
Ingredients Cake:
3 cups of uncooked farina, such as Cream of Wheat - 10 minute cook time style (found in the hot cereal section)
1/2 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups plain low-fat yogurt
1 1/2 cups honey
4 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
grated zest of one orange
1/2 cup blanched slivered almonds, coarsely chopped
Syrup:
1 1/2 cups Honey
1 1/2 cups orange juice
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 °. Grease a 10-inch bundt pan, or coat with baking spray.
Cake:
In a large bowl, sift together farina, flour, baking powder and soda.
In a medium bowl whisk together yogurt, honey, orange juice concentrate and grated zest. Stir into farina mixture until combined. Add chopped almonds and stir well. Pour into prepared pan. While cake is baking prepare syrup, see directions below.
Bake cake 40 – 45 minutes until golden brown. Remove to a rack. Poke lots of holes into top of cake with a toothpick. Pour syrup over cake in pan. Let sit in pan overnight. If necessary use a knife to loosen sides of cake from pan. Turn out onto a cake plate.
Syrup:
While cake is baking prepare syrup. In a medium saucepan combine 1 1/2 cups honey with 1 1/2 cups orange juice. Bring to a boil and simmer at a low boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Skim off any foam.
I will note that the one I had wasn’t made using orange juice, it had orange flower water used. The syrup was a classic simple syrup of sugar boiled in water to dissolve it, then cooled and the orange blossom water added. Instead of large chopped almond bits, almonds ground to the same size as the farina/semolina was used. I would imagine the recipe used was actually really greek, and not some honey company’s version.
I just now googled BAKLAVA CAKE and got just shy of two million hits – sure as clicking the first link of course produced a Baklava Cake recipe with instructions on how to stack crushed almonds between filo layers before soaking the whole thing in a whole lot of honey-and-lemon-juice-and-cinnamon-based syrup.
(Which is now busily killing my interest in continuing this hijack, as it’s instead piquing my interest in baking up some sweet baklava cake. )
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