Ireland is big on charities. I had no idea about it before moving here, but you don’t need more than a week to figure it out. I’ve searched more information, for the purposes of this article, and found that there is an official body that regulates all the charities, and that currently, in 2016 there are more than 4000 registered charities.
So, it’s absolutely normal that in every supermarket during the weekend people collect money for their charities. It could be the mighty bikers collecting money for orphaned kids, or some high-school collecting funds for their own needs, people running marathons, organizing concerts or like in this case – bake cakes.
Since in my office we have yearly bake offs, I decided to join the campaign this year both as a baker and a buyer.
At the same time, I wanted to be original, surprise people and let them try something they most likely they never did.
The choice this year was easy – Ston cake / Stonska Torta.
This cake is so rare even in Croatia, that I guess less than 15% of the Croatians tried it. I might be wrong though, but… 🙂
Let’s see how this cake is done.
You need the following:
Ingredients for the pastry (crust):
– 1 egg
– 2 tbsp Olive oil
– 1 cup water with salt
– 1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
– Flour (mix plain and strong flour, use enough to make soft dough)
For the filling:
– 500 g pasta (Penne)
– 250-300 g walnuts (ground)
– 50-100 g almonds (ground)
– 60 g baking chocolate (grated) (can be skipped)
– 500 g brown sugar
– lemon zest (or rind)
– cinnamon
For the sauce:
– 4-5 eggs
– pear liqueur
– cardamom ground
– 2-3 tsp brown sugar
– a few drops of water
Process:
First put the pasta in boiling salted water, and cook it “al dente”, or to say – a minute less than it states on the packaging, as it needs to stay a bit harder since it will be baked for an hour later. 🙂
While the pasta is in the pot, you can start mixing egg, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar for the pastry. Add flour slowly to avoid bumps and mix it until it’s hard enough as bread dough should be. When it looks firm enough, oil it with a few drops of oil and let it sit for a while.
While the dough is relaxing, you can make the filling by mixing all the ingredients – walnuts, almonds, chocolate (I skipped it in my cake, as there are variants of this cake with or without it), lemon zest, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
When the pasta is cooked, take it off the hob, and rinse it with cold water until cold then strain it well. Add half of the previously made walnuts-almond-sugar-spices filling into pasta, and mix it well. You should get something that looks like this.
To create the sauce mix the eggs, cardamom, sugar, water and pear liqueur. In case that you don’t have the liqueur you can use any kind of rum or some sweet alcohol. I used a few drops of pear rakija. 🙂
This sauce will be used with the remaining filling mix later on.
But first, we need to spread the dough into the thin pizza like form, and put it into well oiled cake baking mould. Leave the dough hanging outside the mould, as you’ll need to cover the cake once it’s formed. As you can see my dough was just slightly to thin and I had a couple of holes in the product. 🙂
Now! The most exciting part of this recipe. Add 1/4 of the filling on the mould bottom, then 1/3 of pasta and then pour 1/3 of the sauce across the layer.
Repeat that two more times, until the mould is full, then close it with the dough that’s hanging out. Again, I had a couple of holes, so I had to improvise a bit. 🙂
Now, put the cake in the oven and bake it for an hour at the temperature of 150 degrees Celsius.
Once done and crust has a nice golden colour, let it cool down a bit, and use the remaining filling as decoration. At least, that’s what I did. 🙂
As you can see, I’ve turned it upside down, to hide those mentioned holes and imperfections. 😛
And that’s it, you are ready to try your first Croatian Ston Cake.
As I came first in the office people were quite interested in the cake, but unfortunately I was in the meeting when the cake was cut. Apparently, their interest was lost when they saw the pasta. 😀
Ston cake did not win the competition, but it got me the special, originality award.
Or to be more precise, let me quote:
“Special Award: Our inaugural “Originality Award” goes to (shock horror) Igor Stojakovic for his Croatian “Is that Pasta??” Stonska Torta”
🙂
Well, that was the whole point of making it. Shock the colleagues, and let them try something new even though I knew that I have no chances in a fierce competition. Ferrero Rocher Cheescake, Banoffe Pie and Walnut and Mascarpone stuffed dates were much sweeter. 🙂
The most important part is that Ston cake was used for good purpose and we collected 200+ Euros for a charity and we helped someone.
Hopefully someone will continue with the charities in 20-30 years time when we’ll all need help fighting diabetes. 😀
I’m open to suggestions for the next year’s bake off.
Till the next one.
Kisses,
Balky