Polish cake with a royal touch

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This article was published 06/07/2011 (5264 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few weeks back we received a request from Marta Alphonso for a recipe for a mazurek cake. She had found one about 10 years ago at the back of a children’s book on Poland that she had taken out of the West Kildonan Library. Now, that’s a challenging request, even for resourceful Free Press readers. But several people responded with mazurek (also called mazurka) recipes of their own. Thanks to Terri Massey of Selkirk, Linda Snider of Glenboro, Maureen Blake, who offered a recipe adapted from The Art of Polish Cooking by Aline Zeranska, and to Jean Sorko and Selkirk’s Helen Glowienka, whose recipe, taken from the Culinary Arts Institute Polish Cookbook, seems to come closest to Marta’s chocolate-topped mystery cake.

This Polish cake is often served at Easter, sometimes elaborately decorated with nuts and fruit or lattice-patterned pastry. Some versions use a yeast dough; some favour a rich cake made with ground almonds and leavened only with whole eggs. With these recipes, the batter handles more like cookie or biscuit dough and produces a dense, low cake — one of the mazurek’s other names is a “Polish flat cake.” The cakes can be filled and iced, or topped with dried fruit and peel, apples, preserves or chocolate.

We’re still on the lookout for hot-weather favourites, especially salads. If you can help with a recipe request, have your own request, or a favourite recipe you’d like to share, send an email to recipeswap@freepress.mb.ca, fax it to 697-7412, or write to Recipe Swap, c/o Alison Gillmor, Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6. Please include your first and last name, address and telephone number.

 

Royal mazurka (mazurek krolewski)

6 eggs

650 ml (2 2/3 cups) icing sugar

125 ml (1/2 cup) boiling water

45 ml (3 tbsp) lemon juice

810 ml (3 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour

100 g (1 cup) ground almonds

342 g (1 1/2 cups) butter, melted

250 ml (1 cup) apricot jam

Icing:

500 ml (2 cups) icing sugar, sifted

15 ml (1 tbsp) warm water

30-45 ml (2-3 tbsp) lemon juice

Preheat oven to 190C (375F). Line two 22×33 cm (9×13 in) baking pans with parchment paper and butter the paper. Using an electric mixer, beat eggs with sugar for 3-5 minutes, until pale yellow and very light. Mix water and lemon juice in a small cup, and add in a thin stream to the egg mixture while continuing to beat, up to 3 minutes more. Combine flour and almonds, and then, alternating with melted butter, fold gently into the egg mixture. Mix lightly and only enough to incorporate. Divide batter between two prepared pans and bake for 20-25 minutes or until edges start to turn golden, watching carefully. Cool for 10 minutes and then turn out onto racks to cool completely. Meanwhile, make icing by mixing sifted icing sugar with warm water and 30 ml (2 tbsp) lemon juice until sugar dissolves and mixture is white, smooth and thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Add more sugar if mixture is too thin; add more lemon juice if mixture is too thick. Spread one cake with jam, cover it with the other cake and spread the icing over the top.

Tester’s notes: I wasn’t sure what to expect with this Mazurek recipe, but once I got over the fact that it wasn’t a standard light and fluffy North American cake, I really liked its rich, buttery and dense character. (Serve in small pieces.) The original instructions, which called for beating the eggs and sugar for 10 minutes, might go back to the old days of hand mixing. I used an electric mixer and felt that I had about reached the limits of pale frothiness by five minutes. Watch baking time, as this kind of cake can become tough if overbaked. Decorate, if desired, with almonds and chopped dried apricots.

 

Royal mazurkas with chocolate topping

228 g (1 cup) butter, softened

375 ml (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour

250 ml (1 cup) white sugar

1 ml (1/4 tsp) salt

6 egg yolks, room temperature

25 g (1/4 cup) ground almonds

5 ml (1 tsp) finely grated lemon or orange peel

Topping:

4 eggs

250 ml (1 cup) white sugar

2 ml (1/2 tsp) vanilla

224 g (8 oz) unsweetened chocolate, grated

15 ml (1 tbsp) all-purpose flour

2 ml (1/2 tsp) salt

310 ml (1 1/4 cup) blanched almonds, chopped

Preheat oven to 160C (325F). Grease a 38x25x2.5 cm (15x10x1) jelly-roll pan. In a large bowl, cream butter until very light and fluffy. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, sugar and salt. Alternately add in one egg yolk with 1/6 of the dry ingredients, stirring lightly and gently but thoroughly until incorporated. Stir in ground almonds and peel. Put dough into prepared pan, spreading to fit. Bake for about 25-35 minutes until golden but not brown at edges, remove from oven and let cool slightly, while reducing oven temperature to 120C (250F).

Meanwhile, prepare chocolate topping. Using an electric mixer, beat eggs with sugar and vanilla in a medium bowl until pale yellow and light. Add grated chocolate and beat until well mixed. Add flour, salt and chopped almonds. Spread chocolate mixture over slightly cooled cake and bake at 120C (250C) for 5-7 minutes, or until topping is set. Cut into small squares to serve.

Tester’s notes: Screw-up alert: I mistakenly used ground almonds instead of chopped almonds for the chocolate topping, which changed the consistency but certainly didn’t hurt the taste, which was dark and chocolatey-good, and a creamy complement to the shortbready base. One tricky thing: The size of pan specified in the recipe can be hard to find. Back in the days when everybody was making jelly-rolls, it was standard, but these days most 15×10-inch lidded cookie sheets only have 3/4-inch sides. I was a bit nervous that it might overflow, but it wasn’t an issue, since the Mazurek doesn’t have the leavening of a standard North American cake. I found I had to be careful with the baking time, making sure not to overbake on the first round, as the cake will cook some more with the topping. I found I needed more time for the topping to set, about 10 minutes in total.