Sunday 13 January 2008

Turkish spinach cake

Polish: szpinak
portuguese: espinafre
Dutsch: spinazie
Gujarati: પાલક
Persian: اسفناج
Guarani: ka’anaite
Russian: Шпинат
Greek: σπανάκι
Korean: 시금치
Luxemburgian: Päinetsch
Basque: ziazerba
Irish: spionáiste

Spinach cake (Ispanaklı kek) is a Turkish green wonder. Recipe was taken somewhere from the net. I found several recipes in English and Turkish and compared them and chose something in-between :) It was fun translating the ingredients and way of preparing since I never learnt Turkish, but languages are my passion so when I can join languages with cooking I am twice happy.



3 eggs
1/2 cup oil (mine was sunflower seeds oil)
1 package frozen spinach (450gr)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

1 cup whipped cream (next time I'll take 2 cups)
1 tsp gelatine (not necessarily)
1/2 cup chopped pistachio

1. Cook spinach in half glass of water until soft, and drain very well. You must receive a spinach puree. Chop it very very finely.

2. Beat eggs with sugar and vanilla sugar until eggs are nice yellowish and sugar is melted. Add oil and continue mixing. Add drained spinach and lemon juice. Mix, mix, mix!

3. Sift flour with baking powder to the spinach batter

4. Grease the pan and strew it with breadcrumbs, pour the mass and bake about half an hour in 180C. When ready, divide into two layers.


(one of thelayers waiting to be covered with cream)

5. Top, middle and aside top with whipped cream (optionally, like in my case, mixed with 1 spoon of melted gelatine) and sprinkle generously chopped pistachios. Yummyyyyy!

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