Hot Chocolate Dry Recipe

Polish cake with a royal touch

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.

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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 22x33 cm (9x13 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.