International weekend in our kitchen , part 1: Italian cake

This weekend I tried 2 new recipes, both were from (http://julietgabriel.blogfa.com). Juliet is such a talented girl and I just could go through her blog for hours, I really admire her talent and always think "oh how she can find time to do all these things!"

She writes in Persian but anyone can use her blog, thanks to Google of course :).So Juliet, thank you dear for sharing these wonderful and delicious recipes and wish you all the best.

The first post will be about the cake (part1). it is a simple cake which is originally from Italy; it requires 2 steps of baking: one for the cake itself and another for the chocolate topping. you could use any type of topping or nothing at all, your choice.as Juliet said in her post this is one of those cakes that are perfect as birthday cakes too. ( oh, here is the direct link of the cake from her blog :http://julietgabriel.blogfa.com/post-172.aspx)

Ingredients for the cake:
Eggs at room temperature  4
Milk at room temperature  1/2 cup
Vanilla 2 teaspoon
Flour 1 3/4 cup
Baking powder  2 teaspoon
Salt 3/4 teaspoon
Butter close to room temperature 16 tablespoon

First step like always is to turn your oven to 350 F and cover your pan with wax paper. in a bowl, mix eggs, milk and vanilla with electrical mixer at low speed for about a minute.
In a food processor mix flour, baking powder, salt ( which are sieved already) with sugar for very short time ( about 30 s). cut the butter in small pieces and mix them one by one with the rest of the dry materials at low speed.
mix one cup of the egg and milk mixture  with the rest of the materials in food processor for about 10 s. increase the speed slightly ( now at medium speed) and mix for a bout a minute. add the rest of the milk and egg mixture and mix for about 30 s. if some materials are still unmixed and attached to the side of the bowl, stop the mixing and add them to the rest with a spatula and mix for another 40s.
pour the batter in your pan and bake for about 25- 30 minutes, before taking out the cake test if it is ready by a knife or fork (you know how).
take out the cake from the pan and let it cool down. now lets make the chocolate topping.

Ingredients for chocolate topping:


Chocolate any type at your choice ( I used the semi-sweet baking chocolates, )  400 gr
Whipped cream 35%   1 1/2 cup
Honey 3 table spoon
Vanilla 1 teaspoon

Put the chocolates and cream in the cooking pan ( at low heat) till the chocolates are melted and mixed with cream. just be careful not to boil the cream. after they are mixed, remove from the heat and mix the honey and vanilla with them and mix perfectly for about 3 minutes ( with electrical mixer or non-electrical ones) . put the cream in the fridge for about an hour and every 15 minutes mix it so the cream thickens. after an hour you can mix the cream with mixer for about few minutes but mine was already thickened here and was ready.

By now your cake is completely cooled down. you could divide it to half, cover the between with cream and the put the top half on. then pour the rest of the cream on the surface of the cake.

So as a final note, I have no idea why this is called Italian cake, I tried and  look into some recipes of popular Italian cakes to find the exact name but could not find any that similar to these; still looking though. however if you make the cake you will see that the texture of the cake is the same as all Italian cakes. hope you make this and enjoy!

Mania