Moldovan "Baba Neagra" Cake

Elena Butuc

This recipe was automatically translated from Romanian. View original here

Today I have the opportunity to show you one of the most special recipes of our area (it is not made elsewhere, except in northern Moldova) - Baba Neagra Cake(translated like "Black Baba"!). It is a kind of cake / pie, with simple ingredients and seem trivial at first sight, but look that I had to spoil it about 4 times until I got the exemplary Black Baba, as it should be in color and taste. The whole thing is that the black color is obtained not from cocoa, but from the fact that during the longer baking process (4 hours) the oil with baking soda and buttermilk reacts - here it is usually made in a wood oven and it lasts a long time, together with the stuffed cabbage in clay pots and other baked goods.

I managed to create conditions similar to those of a wood oven, juggling the oven temperature and using aluminum foil as thermal insulation.

So, as it tastes - like a kind of well-baked pudding - soft, porous, elastic - it melts in your mouth. Here it is Baba Alba (sweet noodle pudding) is usually served for dessert on the same plate as Baba Neagra.

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Ingredients

Metric US

●

Egg

10 pieces

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White flour

2 cups

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Sunflower oil

200 ml

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Baking soda

1.5 tbsp

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Sugar

300 g

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Buttermilk/Youghurt/Kefir

250 ml

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Milk

500 ml

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Vodka

25 ml

optional

Step by step

The quantities of ingredients in the recipe are for a pandispan tray, 28-30cm in diameter.

It is very important to wrap the tray in 2-3 levels of aluminum foil - below and the edges.

Bake paper on the bottom of the tray.

Beat the eggs well - better with the mixer.

In a larger bowl, mix the flour with the baking soda.

Add sugar and oil, stir a little.

Then the milk works - mix well with the whisk.

Add the whipped milk / kefir, vodka and mix so that they are not lumpy.

And the last add beaten eggs, mix well.

A more liquid dough will come out, like pancakes.

Pour it into the tray prepared in step 1.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil on top so it doesn't touch the dough.

Put it in the preheated oven at 200 degrees for 2 hours, after this time lower the temperature to 100 degrees and leave it in the oven for 2 more hours.

Or put the tray in the wood oven for 2-3 hours.

I usually start doing it around 18.00, at 23.00 I turn off the oven (remove the foil from above) and let it cool slowly in the oven until morning.

In the morning it looks like this in the section - the grandmother does not grow at all in height, but she makes these big pores that make her tender and fluffy.