S05E19 Amygdalopita (Greek almond cake)
Proper recipe card TBA, but here’s the recipe, as per the video, and the bunch of times I made it for my sister who seems to be addicted to it. I think it’s all about the syrup, as seems to be the case with the majority of Greek desserts :
- loukoumades,
- galactoboureko,
- baklava,
- almost all the kadaifi/kataifi variants other than “*km*k kataifi”, which uses a Turkish word, and those are forbidden around here,
- revani,
- diples,
- I’m too lazy to Google to find the ones I’m sure I missed
syrup
- 2 cups 420g sugar (ideally light brown sugar, add 1 tbsp molasses to white sugar)
- 380 ml water (1.5 cup water is 360 close enough)
- 2 cloves
- 1 3″ cinnamon stick, or 1/2 tsp ground
- zest/peel (no white at all) of 1 large navel orange, lemon, random citrus
- 2 tbsp juice of that citrus
Stir the water and sugar in a large pot. Add the rest of the ingredients. Bring all this to a boil at medium heat. Reduce to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature before straining out the bits of stuff.
We’ve already started at more than 1:1 ratio of sugar to water, so we don’t need to worry about reducing this to thicken it up.
cake
- 1 cup almond flour (the oldschool recipe calls for 85g white almonds, toasted and finely ground, plus 50g very dry and very finely ground breadcrumbs. Since this recipe is usually listed as “flourless”, the breadcrumbs seems very sus to me. If you want a toasted almond flavour, you can dry roast some of the almond flour in a non-stick pan at medium heat, and keep it moving around so it doesn’t burn.)
- 8 eggs at room temperature
- Zest from 1 large navel orange/ 2 bergamots / 1 lemon
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground clove
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- 40 ml brandy
- 70 gr light brown sugar (5.5 tbsp, round up to 6)
- 1 tsp (bitter) almond extract 1 tbsp of Amaretto
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
separate 8 eggs
In one bowl, whip whites to stiff peaks
In another bowl, beat yolks to light and fluffy.
Stir in all the remaining ingredients other than the flour , and then mix in the flour.
Gradually fold the egg whites using a rubber or silicone spatula.
Pour the mix into a greased pan, bake 40 mins @350F.
Toothpick test.
Toothpick test.
Remove from heat, place on heatproof tray/larger baking dish, and pour the cooled syrup over it.