Fennel-spiced Semolina Cake with Yoghurt

I found this fantastic recipe in a recent Gourmet Traveller Bread & Baking magazine. It is a real triumph so I’ve added it to my blog which has all my favourite tried & tested recipes. You can see more of my recipes below.

If you make this cake I’d love to know what you think of it.

Ingredients

220 gm softened butter

200 gm caster sugar

Finely grated rind and juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange

4 eggs

2 tsp baking powder

200 gm fine semolina

150 gm almond meal

100 gm finely chopped roasted almonds, plus extra to serve

125 ml (½ cup) buttermilk

3 tsp roasted fennel seeds, ground

Finely grated orange rind, to serve

Sweetened yoghurt

300 gm thick natural yoghurt

100 gm pure icing sugar, sifted

Lemon syrup

3 pieces of lemon rind, removed with a peeler

80 gm caster sugar

For sweetened yoghurt, place yoghurt in a muslin-lined sieve over a bowl and refrigerate overnight to drain. Discard liquid. Combine with sugar until smooth and refrigerate until needed.

 Preheat oven to 170°C. Butter a 22cm cake tin and line with baking paper. Beat butter, sugar and citrus rinds in an electric mixer until pale and fluffy (8-10 minutes). Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then add baking powder, semolina, almond meal, almonds, citrus juice, buttermilk, fennel seed and a pinch of salt and mix to just combine. Spoon into tin and bake until cake is golden and a skewer inserted withdraws clean (35 minutes).

For lemon syrup, combine ingredients with 80ml water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

 Pierce cake all over with a skewer, then drizzle with syrup and set aside to cool (1-2 hours).

 Scatter cake with extra nuts and orange rind and serve with sweet yoghurt.

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