ready, steady, cake

I did not bake a cake on Thursday night as I said I would, indulging in "extreme-couching" instead. This morning I finally got down to it. It's a really simple cake and so delicious that I guarantee you everyone who tries it will want the recipe. I got it from the Mermaid and therefore decided to call it "Mermaid Cake" for the purpose of this blog. I initially christened it "Heidrun-Torte" as the Mermaid got the recipe from a mutual friend's mother whose first name is Heidrun. It's actually a kind of cheese-cake with a twist and you don't even need a mixer to whisk the ingredients together. You do , however, need an ingredient which might be hard to come by in your part of the world, Topfen (in Austrian German, which is the same as Quark in German German), an integral part of Austrian cuisine. It's often translated as curd or curd cheese but you can use either ricotta cheese, sour cream or creme fraiche as substitutes if you can get any of those. So, if you want to impress your friends with a cheesecake but don't have the time or energy (it really is as easy as the Christmas cookies for dummies recipe) to spend ages in the kitchen, here goes:

Mermaid Cake

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons semolina
1 teaspoon baking powder
100 g sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
500g curd (see above)
2 large or 3 small eggs
2 tablespoons lemon juice
grated zest of a lemon
2 tablespoons fruit juice (I used mango juice)
130g melted butter at room temperature

+ fruit of your choice for decoration - I used (half of a fresh) mango and have also tried it with blueberries. You could also use canned peaches for example

+ almond shavings (optional, but it's a good trick from preventing the top from browning too much too soon)

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180°. Just whisk together all ingredients in a bowl and pour into a buttered (springform) pan. Decorate with fruits and cover with almond shavings. Bake for about 55 minutes (until firm).

Let cool (it tastes nice hot, too, by the way) and serve chilled.

Good luck!

Purchases: I bought something really interesting at the MAK design shop this afternoon. Stay tuned.