There’s nothing like getting up early to attend a boot camp gym session, walking to Whole Foods for a delicious and healthy bottle of citrus kombucha, only to come home and negate the entire process by making an entire tray of brownies for lunch. Continuing in that vein, my mom and I decided that today was a day for a dessert recipe — we will take a short break from cabbage this week. Fear not! It will probably be back in one fashion or another next week. However, since today my sweet tooth is insatiable, I give you: Czar Cake.
My mom loves this recipe because it’s incredibly low-maintenance on the supplies end of things. If you have an electric mixer, eggs, butter, and sugar, and a can of cranberry sauce or a tart jam, you’re in business. She throws this together for last-minute dinner parties and all of her guests are impressed and flattered that she would go to “so much trouble” to make dessert from scratch. This recipe is basically the equivalent of throwing on a dress and having everyone tell you how nice and put together you look. It’s one item of clothing. It took four and a half seconds. With the exception of whipping egg whites into peaks, this recipe is nearly as painless as putting on a dress.
Czar Cake
200 grams butter (or 1 ¾ sticks), room temperature (very soft)
1 1/4 cup sugar, divided
3 eggs, yolks separated from whites
1/3 tsp baking soda
2 cups flour
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar powder (optional)
6-7 oz tart jam (eg: lingonberry, black currant) or cranberry sauce
Separate the yolks from the whites. Cover the whites with plastic wrap and set back in the fridge for 20-30 minutes (they will peak more easily when cold).
Preheat oven to 280 F.
Mix flour, butter, ¼ cup sugar, egg yolks, and baking soda together. This part is easiest to mix by hand. On an ungreased 9″ x 13” baking pan, flatten the dough by hand so it is thin and consistent across the pan. Try to get the dough all the way to the edges. This will be a good measure of just how thin the dough needs to be. Set the pan into the fridge while you are doing the next step.
Beat one cup of sugar and the egg whites together with an automatic mixer until stiff peaks form (about 10 minutes). A nice trick to get the peaks to form is to add a ¼ teaspoon of cream of tartar powder. To test if it’s properly mixed, try a little of the mix — you should feel no graininess from the sugar on your tongue.
Once they are beaten, set them into the fridge and pull out the pan with the dough. Spread a thin, translucent layer of jam evenly across the dough. It is very important to keep the layer thin, or the cake will come out soggy. Don’t be afraid to see the dough through the jam – this ensures that the layer is not too thick!
Top the jam layer with the whipped egg and sugar blend. As with the previous two layers, this layer should also be fairly consistent in thickness and coverage. Don’t be afraid to go all the way to the edges of the pan. A nice visual touch is to allow “waves” or swirly shapes to remain in the top layer – it will look nice when it comes out of the oven.
Set cake into the preheated oven for one hour. Once you remove the cake, cut it into 2-inch squares while hot, on the baking sheet. Do not transfer to another plate or board for cutting! Let the cake cool completely, uncovered. Leaving it uncovered is another step in making sure it dries to the correct consistency and doesn’t become soggy.
Enjoy with a cup of tea or a glass of cognac — you know, like the czars would. Obviously.
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