The first recipe in this series, while quite nice, was not much of an invention. This postings “Moreish Mooncake” a.k.a. the “Buster Keaton cake” is the result of a few attempts to bring together, in one cake, the two great worlds of the carrot cake and the poppy seed cake. It was baptized recently at a splendid dinner hosted by my good friends Roman and Ulf, when Ulf told us about how his Scottish step-aunt would call great food “moreish” because you always wanted to eat more of them. I first came up with the original recipe for Teresa’s Birthday. So, Teresa, this one is for you:
Ingredients: 150g butter, 150g sugar, 5 eggs, 50 finely ground breadcrumbs, 120g poppy seeds, 300g carrots, 100g ground almonds (walnuts or hazelnuts might also be nice but Teresa is allergic to those), 1 organic lemon (you need the zest and the juice), 200g sour crème. For the icing: 1 lemon, 250g icing sugar, red currant jam.
Whip the butter and the sugar until it is a homogenous crème, slowly add the 5 egg yolks. Add the breadcrumbs and the poppy seeds, the carrots, the almonds and finally the lemon juice, zest and the sour cream. Add the beaten white of egg (this is what the leo online dictionary gives me for “Eischnee” – literally egg-snow. Sometimes I really like German…). Bake at medium temperature for about one hour.
While the cake is still hot, spread a thin layer of the jam on the cake. For the icing, whip the icing sugar with the juice of one lemon and, if needed, small amounts of warm water. When you think it has the right consistency, pour it over the cake.
Buster Keaton, also known as “the great stone face”, made some brilliant silent film sketches in the 1920ies. Today the term slapstick has a pretty negative connotation, but this genius's perfect timing and his sublime body control just blow me away. Just like, hopefully, this cake will blow you away :)
As always, this cake is released under a creative commons license.
