Slovenian buckwheat & plum cake
When I came across an image of buckwheat & plum cake I knew immediately I needed to try it. Simple in appearance and loaded with substance – thanks to the use of whole grains, not the ground stuff.
Strange thing is that struggled to find anything online about it other than the one recipe I found here.
Perhaps Slovenia is keeping this one to themselves?
In a country that has a cuisine influenced by its neighbours of Austria, Croatia, Italy and Hungary, you could get confused by what’s traditionally Slovenian and what’s ‘adopted’.
Wiener schnitzel, pizza, gulás and burek can be seen quite a bit in this beautiful country, but something tells me that the humble buckwheat grain lays closer to its heart. I’m under the impression that they love the stuff.
This grain is mainly used in savoury dishes, but the occasional sweet one pops up now and again. The point of difference with this cake is the use of whole grains, as I mentioned earlier; something that’s cooked into a porridge before other ingredients are added.
This is what appealed to me the most as I’ve never seen a cake made this way before. And that’s why you’re seeing it here.
Texture wise, this is a very dense cake. The buckwheat grains are cooked and very soft, and there’s so much moisture in there. And I mean a lot. So much so that when mine was cooked and after I cut into it, I figured it could do with a little more oven time to draw out a little more of the moisture.
The original recipe calls for a few tablespoons of sugar, due to the sweet, cinnamon and clove-spiced prunes that are also in the batter. Even with the prunes I found the uncooked batter a little too savoury, so I added more. Not an overload, but just enough sugar to point it to dessert territory.
The end result is a dense, textured cake that almost feels like it’s doing you some good, rather than filling you with sugar. And the handful of people that tried it, loved it.
My little addition of sweetened sour cream as a condiment isn’t all that necessary, but it does go nicely with it. Well I think so, anyway. It must be the Croatian in me.
Adapted from here
*Please note, hydrangea flowers are not edible and I have only used them as a garnish.
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servings
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- 250 ml sour cream (1 cup)
- ¼ cup icing sugar
- 200 g prunes pitted
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 5 cloves
- 300 g buckwheat rinsed and drained
- 1 litre milk
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ cup caster sugar
- 200 ml cream
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 50 g butter (¼ cup) melted
- 4 eggs whisked
- 4 plums seeded and quartered
Ingredients
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- Combine the sour cream and ¼ cup icing sugar, cover and refrigerate.
- Put the pitted prunes, cinnamon and cloves into a small bowl. Top with hot water, mix well, and set aside.
- Put the rinsed buckwheat into a large saucepan along with the milk and salt. Bring to the boil over medium heat, stir occasionally, simmer for 10-15 minutes and watch that the milk doesn't boil over.
- Turn the heat off and let it sit until room temperature. If there's excess milk when the buckwheat has cooled, drain it off.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C. Grease and line a 20 cm springform cake tin.
- Drain the soaked prunes really well, discard the cloves and squish the prunes with your hand to break them up into a rough paste. Mix this through the cooled buckwheat, followed by the sugar, cream, vanilla, melted butter and whisked eggs.
- Pour the batter into the prepared baking tin, smooth the surface and arrange the quartered plums over the top.
- Bake in the oven for 1-1½ hours, or until it's cooked all the way through. Cool completely before removing from the cake tin.
- Serve with the prepared sweetened sour cream.
