Intro
When I can, I avoid baking anything sweet, because if history is to be trusted, then it's to be repeated, and I'm gonna screw up. I don't know if sweet cooking is inherently more difficult than savory cooking, or if it's just anything flour-related that puts the screw in the phrasal verb.
But on special occasions, like the holidays, or birthdays, I just can't help but attempt yet again, and more often than not I fall into the flame once more like a nutty gnat.
Luckily, this wasn't the case this time! It was my mom's birthday, and thankfully the cake turned out good!
So let's get reviewing!
Evocative Almond Cake
What does it evoke, you ask? I'll give you the answer, but I'm not sure non-Greeks will understand it.
Shakespeare once quipped, "an ergolavos by any other name would taste as sweet". Or something of the sort. I forget.
Even before I had transferred the pan into the oven, and even before I had transferred the batter into the pan — alas, even before I had removed the batter from the blender — I could already tell by the smell, "hey, this reminds me of ergolavos". Or pastitsio, as it's often called in Cyprus.
When, finally, he who smelt it ate it, his (my) suspicions were confirmed: this was ergolavos by another name (and form), and not as sweet (contra the Bard). Well, it was sweeter, but not as good!
It had the satisfying crunchy outer texture, it had the pleasing soft interior, the taste was quite similar — all that was missing was a baby getting baptized or somebody getting married, as those are the social occasions on which traditionally these hand-sized treats are handed out to the bored-out-of-their-wits attendees, wrapped up like a small present (and oh what a present they are!) so that people can take them home, where the kids will proceed to unwrap and eat them all, leaving none for the parents. (Unless my family was atypical. But it wasn't, was it? Hmm. I guess I owe my mom a couple more of these almond cakes...)
Review
It's easy to make. It's all done in the blender. No flour-kneading, which is probably why it didn't fail miserably like so many of my other sweet-baking attempts. My pan was a bit wider which means the cake was a bit squatter and broader. The ingredients were common and I bought twice as many slivered almonds than I needed (the only expensive ingredient), so the price turned out to be quite reasonable for a sweet baked good.
However, ergolavi (plural of ergolavos) are actually better. Even much better. But they may also be much harder to make. I don't know, I've never tried.
The sugar topping was a bit too much for me, even though it was just 2 tablespoons, but I'm quite weaned from sugar, I rarely have it, so I tend to think many things modern culture serves us are too sweet (and I notice they're only getting sweeter).
Good thing about this, is it has 4 whole eggs, and flour, and almonds (obviously), so it's not exactly empty calories. I'm not gonna call it a health food, but it's not on your diabetes most wanted list either. It's also all olive oil, no butter. The heart association approves! (reference needed...)
And despite the eggs, it doesn't need refrigeration. The sugar acts as a preservative, I guess. We had it out a week or so and there's no spoilage whatsoever. (We had it covered, though.)
Final Verdict
Good. Easy. Relatively cheap. Everyone who tried it liked it. I'm gonna be making this again in the future (unless I give ergolavi a try and don't fail!)
The cookbook
Almond Cake in The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook: 500 Vibrant, Kitchen-Tested Recipes for Living and Eating Well Every Day, by The Editors at America's Test Kitchen.
All pics by yours truly. All two of them.
Past episodes:
1: Cookbook With Me #1 - Surprisingly Good Pickled Okra!