Sunday 30 March 2008

Polish sand cake

Polish: piasek
Chechen: гхум
Samoan: oneone
Romansch: sablun
Xhosa: isidibi
Old Prussian: smėltės
Mongolian: элс
Thai: ทราย
Inupiaq: maġġaq
Aymara: ch'alla

... Sand? Why did someone call this cake a sand cake? No, there are no unpleasant lumps that crack and rustle between your teeth... Quite to the contrary, Polish babka piaskowa, sand cake, has a lovely soft consistency, because of the addition of potato starch. Polish babka piaskowa is a sister of German Sandkuchen (even the names eman just the same) but as I observed, in German recipes you should take same amount of wheat flour and starch. Instead of potato starch you could use cornstarch* (I am almost sure cause I saw cornstarch in several Sandkuchen recipes) and maybe even tapioca* (I am experimenting with tapioka lately, its consistency reminds me of potato starch)

4 eggs
200 gr powdered sugar
150 gr wheat flour
100 gr potato starch*
200 gr soft butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons milk
arak aroma / 1 tablespoon arak / vanilla / zest + juice from 1 lemon

1. Mix well soft butter with sugar. When homogeneous, add yolks one by one

2. Mix wheat flour with potato starch and baking powder, sift half of it to the eggs, add milk, mix and sift the rest of the flour

3. Beat whites. When stiff, combine with what you obtained in point 2. Also now add flavour (vanilla, arak, aroma or lemon)

4. Bake about 1 hour (depending, as always, on your oven) in 180C. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.



3 comments:

Ewa said...

I love this cake. I am from Poland and now I am temorary in the USA. I really want to make out babka piaskowa :). I need to just look for potato starch or corn starch? Do you think it's gonna be still good if you ise cornstarch?
Congrats on great blog!

Thyago said...

whatever :P
it's should be tasty with milk and coffe :)

Ewa said...

@Ewa: cornstarch jak najbardziej, a nawet rice starch, arrowroot flour i inne skrobie. Nie będzie problemu. Albo po prostu dodaj odpowiednią ilość budyniu w proszku bez cukru.

@Thy: you are so right :)