Revani pastasi, semolina and coconut syrup cake
My grandma’s recipe book keeps the secrets to this delicious cake.
A recipe from her friend Nuran to make when you’re in a stitch or just a mood (but don’t have too much time to commit to it). Remember to keep some coconut aside for serving. I think you could also serve this with a scoop of good quality vanilla ice-cream, but we just had it with black tea.
Ingredients
For the syrup
2 cups caster sugar
3 cups water
For the cake
4 eggs
1 cup self-raising flour
1 cup semolina
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup olive oil
1 cup natural yoghurt
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
Squeeze of lemon juice, less is more here
Method
Preheat oven to 180C.
Combine the caster sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and let it bubble and thicken for 20-30 minutes. Fatma suggests that the syrup is ready once you can rest a drop of it on your thumbnail. Once it’s done, put it in the fridge to cool.
Beat the eggs and sugar together with an electric mixer until well combined. Then add the olive oil and stir gently with a spoon. Add the yoghurt and beat again with the electric mixer, but lightly this time, until just combined. Add the flour, semolina and coconut. Combine with a spoon.
In a small bowl, combine the bicarb and a couple of drops of lemon juice. Pour this mixture into the batter and combine.
Butter a 40 x 30cm baking pan by putting the pan into the oven for 30 seconds to warm it up. Then take a knob of butter rub it over the pan, the butter should soften enough that it coats the pan easily.
Pour the batter into the tray and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Let the cake rest for a couple of minutes, then take your cold syrup and ladle it over the hot cake. The cake will quickly absorb all of the syrup. Let the cake rest and cool before serving with a little sprinkle of coconut on top. (We were impatient and ate it warm which I don’t regret in the slightest.)
A note on preparation When you add the syrup to the baked cake, one of the two components (cake or syrup) must be hot and the other cold. In the method above our cake is hot and the syrup is cold. However, you can pre-prepare the cake, cut into portions and then defrost in the fridge overnight. Then, when you’re ready to serve, create your syrup, let it cool just a little (so that it’s still warm, but cool enough that you can touch the side of the pot) and then pour over the defrosted, cold cake.
