Rosinenkí¼chen (Raisin Cake)

[Pool Boy]

Rosinenkuchen (Raisin Cake)

This is the first of a series of recipes from the kitchen of my mother.

Raisin Cake is a comfort food of my youth. My mother was a wonderful baker, primarily of cakes and cookies. Most of her recipes are very simple, and deeply rooted in German cuisine. This cake is sweet, but not too sweet, and is made from a pretty thick and stiff batter. It is actually an adaptation from a recipe (Rodonkuchen) published in a cookbook from the conglomerate that brings you Dr. Oetker products called "˜Backen macht Fruede', which translates to "˜Baking Makes You Happy'.

I was often in the kitchen with my mother, growing up. Later, as my mother joined the workforce, she depended on me to help cook dinners at night as she did not get home until almost 6:30PM. The shift from the 6:00PM dinnertime took some getting used to, but I was happy and proud to help out my Mom on this front. It was part of the beginning of my love of all things food. But baking was where the real magic seemed to happen for me (at the time).

Here we go.

Ingredients

·      200 grams butter (about 2 sticks)

·      200 grams sugar

·      1 pack Dr. Oetker's Vanilla Sugar (this looks like 1 tbsp vanilla sugar)

·      4 eggs

·      salt (1/4 tsp or so)

·      500 grams all purpose flour (unbleached ideally)

·      1 pack Dr. Oetker's Baking Powder (this is about 1.5 to 2 tsps of baking powder)

·      125 ml milk

·      300 grams raisins (ideally ½ regular and ½ golden "“ but you could probably use any dried fruit); plump them with hot water or even cognac or other booze

Instructions

·      Preheat oven to 350 to 375 (you know if your oven runs hotter or colder so adjust accordingly)

·      Cream the butter

·      Mix in sugar, vanilla sugar, eggs and salt until well combined

·      Mix in the flour and baking powder next, the batter will be fairly stiff and thick. You will need to add milk to the mixture to keep it fluid enough, but take care not to put too much for it to get too runny (you will generally need all of the milk, but pay attention)

·      Take the raisins and drain from the plumping water or booze and mix in to the cake batter until just well combined

·      Take a tube (or bundt or fluted "“ your choice, but historically tube is correct) cake pan and either use baking spray to coat the interior, or butter the pan by hand.

·      Drop the cake batter in to the pan and make sure to even out the surface

·      Place pan in oven for 50 to 60 minutes. It is usually done in 50, but can go the full 60 depending on your oven's normal behavior.

·      Take pan out and allow to cool about 30 minutes before removing cake from pan

Feel free to experiment with this. One later change my mother made was to add a small amount of sprinkled regular sugar on top of the cake in the last 10-15 minutes of baking so as to crisp up the top crust a bit (but not caramelize). You could also instead dust with powdered sugar after the cake comes out of the oven, But the cake is perfectly good with no such adjustments. Make some good coffee to go with this.

Complete

[susan]

I love this recipe! I'm going to bake it today.