Sri Lankan Love Cake Recipe
Love cake is a fragrant Sri Lankan dessert consisting of coarse flour, eggs, butter, cashews, honey, rose water, extracts, spices, citrus zest and dried fruit. The course flour is first toasted before mixing with the other ingredients to form a batter. The batter is baked until golden.
Coarse flour options include semolina, polenta and cornmeal and they can be used interchangeably. The use of lime zest is typical but can also be used in combination with orange zest. Typical spices are cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. Some love cakes are made will alcohol.
Origin and Significance
Since the Portuguese established trade relations and later ruled in Sri Lanka during the 16th century, love cake is believed to be influenced by the Portuguese semolina-based dessert, bolo du amor, meaning cake of love. Later, Persian love cake would be based on Sri Lankan Love cake.
Making love cake is typically reserved for special occasions and the Christmas holiday. There are several beliefs on why this cake is called a love cake.
The first is that to make it, is a labor of love, the second is that because it takes so much time to make and uses such rich ingredients like cashews and spices, that the person it is presented to must be really loved.
It’s said that Sri Lankan women would make love cakes to try to win the heart of Portuguese sailors.
Sri Lankan Love Cake Recipe
Sri Lankan love cake is a fragrant dessert consisting of coarse flour, eggs, butter, cashews, honey, rose water, extracts, spices, citrus zest and dried fruit.
Ingredients
- Semolina, cornmeal or polenta - 150g
- Cashews (unsalted) - 200g
- Eggs (large) - 6
- Butter (unsalted) - 250g
- Golden caster sugar - 150g
- Honey (light) - 75g
- Cardamom pods (ground) - 20
- Cinnamon (ground) - ½ tbsp
- Lime (zest and juice) - 1
- Orange zest - 1
- Vanilla extract - 1 tsp
- Rose extract (concentrated) - 1/2 tsp
- Mixed peel or chopped dried apricots - 75 g
- Icing sugar - to dust
- Edible flowers to decorate - optional
Instructions
- Add the semolina, cornmeal or polenta into a frying pan and dry fry for 5 minutes, stirring, until it smells toasted.
- Set aside to cool.
- Preheat the oven to 325°F.
- Grease and line a 20cm x 30cm cake tin.
- Grind the cashews finely in a food processor.
- Separate 4 of the eggs; put the whites in a medium mixing bowl and set aside.
- Lightly beat the yolks with the remaining 2 whole eggs, ideally in a jug.
- Get all of the remaining ingredients measured and ready before starting the batter itself.
- Put the butter, caster sugar, honey and a good pinch of salt in a large mixing bowl.
- Beat with an electric mixer for 2-3 minutes until pale and creamy.
- Gradually trickle in the egg yolk mixture, beating constantly.
- Mix in the spices, citrus zests and lime juice, vanilla, rose extract and mixed peel or apricots.
- Stir in the ground cashews and the cooled toasted semolina, cornmeal or polenta.
- Using cleaned beaters, whisk the reserved egg whites until they have floppy peaks – don’t let them get too stiff or they will be hard to fold in.
- Stir a large spoonful through the batter to loosen it then carefully fold in the rest.
- Pour the batter into the prepared tin and shake gently until level.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes until risen, firm and shrinking away from the sides of the tin.
- Cool the cake in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack.
- To decorate, use an A4 sheet of card to make a stencil.
- Place over the cooled cake and dust with the icing sugar.
- Carefully remove the stencil and scatter with the sugar sprinkles and edible flowers, if using.
- Cut into fingers to serve.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 16 Serving Size: 1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 383Total Fat: 21gSaturated Fat: 10gTrans Fat: 1gUnsaturated Fat: 10gCholesterol: 105mgSodium: 257mgCarbohydrates: 44gFiber: 2gSugar: 24gProtein: 7g
Nutrition is provided and calculated by Nutritionix. It is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimation.
Photo Credit: Dan arndt
