Since I’m back in China at the moment my ability to access my blog is fairly sporadic. That’s why I haven’t updated in so long.
For my father’s birthday party, my mum and I cooked a lot of traditional Austrian cold dishes and a cake. The cake is one of my dad’s favourites, probably because it has a ridiculous amount of rum in it.
So here we go, I don’t know who to credit for this since it’s one of my mum’s hand written recipes, which she got from her mum, who probably got it out of a newspaper or magazine. The only thing I’ve done is translate it into English, and added a tonne more rum because the amount in the recipe would only have worked for about five lady fingers.
Ingredients
3 boxes of lady finger biscuits
1/4 litres milk
2 table spoons flour
200 grams margarine
200 grams powdered sugar
A bottle of rum, preferably dark (you’ll probably use about 1/4 Litre)
1 packet of vanilla sugar (or a table spoon of vanilla extract)
3 egg yokes
100 grams ground nuts (I used almonds, but hazelnuts are also very nice)
whipped cream (make it yourself, from a can, whatever you like)
Instructions
Combine the milk and flour in a saucepan, stir with a wooden spoon over low-medium heat. Once it looks like the photo, transfer it into a bowl and set it in the refrigerator to cool.
Place the margarine in a large bowl, beat until fluffy. Continue beating while adding powdered sugar and ground nuts a little at a time. Once this is well combined, the flour-milk mixture will have cooled. Add this one or two spoonfuls at a time while beating. Set aside.
Open the packet of lady fingers and get out a spring form cake mould. Get a shallow, wide bowl and pour some rum in. Look at the height of your spring form, and cut some lady fingers to just above that height. Dunk the lady fingers one at a time in the rum. Dunk the side that isn’t coated in sugar, but it’s not a tragedy if you dunk the sugared side.
Line them up on the inside of the mould along the circumference. With some more lady fingers, line them up on the bottom of the mould after dunking them in an attempt to cover the entire base. You will end up cutting some of them to fit.
Pour about half of the batter into the form over the lady finger base. Smooth it out so it covers the base evenly. Now cover this in another layer of lady fingers, placing them rum side up and perpendicular to the ones on the base layer, otherwise you run the risk of your cake falling apart.
Follow this with the other half of the batter.
Next the final layer of lady fingers, rum side up and perpendicular to the middle layer, and parallel to the base layer.
The cake tastes better if you let it sit in the refrigerator for a day before serving it, but it’s your choice. If you plan on refrigerating for a day, place something like a plate over the top layer of lady fingers to put a bit of weight on them.
Soon before serving cover the top with whipped cream. I also grated some chocolate over that when it was done.
edit sorry about the photos, I couldn’t get the regular uploader to work in the way that I’m now accessing the blog. I may fix them once I get out of China.
