Pumpkin sweet in 3 simple steps

The pumpkin cake or sweet we're talking about today is one of those recipes perfect for any time of the year, since it has to be eaten cold and without a spoon. It's perfect for celebrations, snacks or even party where guests help theirselves, everyone with a piece of this cake and happy with that!

Furthermore, it's so easy that you've no excuses! You can prepare it in a few moments and for the rest you've got your dear friend: mr. Oven! ;)

Ingredients:

• 1 Kg. of pumpkin
• 4 eggs
• 300 g. of flour
• 200 g. of sugar
• 250 ml. of milk
• 125 ml. of olive oil
• 1 drizzle of liquor (optional)
• 1 Tsp of Royal
• 1 Tsp of Vanilla extract
• 1 tin can of condensed milk ( 370 g. aproximately) 
• lemon zest

Preparation:

1- We cut, peel and cook well the pumpkin, then we let it dry well, and we shred it with a food processor.

2- We add all the remaining ingredients to the shredded pumpkin, and stir it well until we obtain an homogeneous mix. Remember to sift the flour befor adding it to the mix, in order to avoid bulks.

3-Grease with butter or with olive oil your mould (in my case, a rectangular mould of 30x18 cms), pour the mix in it and we cook it in a preheated oven at 120°C for some 75 minutes or so.

Our cake in the oven

And there you have it! Ready! Let it cool down, take it off from the mould and cut it into pieces. Once it's completely cold you can put it into the fridge to preserve it longer.

It's a very smooth and creamy sweet. If you're like me and you don't dig pumpkins, you'll surely like it anyway, as I do! Try it and it will surprise you!

Greetings!

AnGie

Canary Island's Vilana Cake

In the month of May we celebrate the day of Canary Islands, and therefore we want to share with you regional recipes from the rich gastronomy of these islands.

Today we start with a traditional sweet dish from the Gomera Island, the Vilana Cake!
It is called vilana because it is named after the rectangular tinpot called vilana or milana. This sweet dish looks like a traditional cake, but its peculiarity is that its dough has potatoes as the main ingredient, and in addition almonds and currants. Canary islands have a huge variety of potatoes, as we previously mentioned in other posts, and the almonds and dried fruits are very presents in the islands, and therefore those products are often used in the gastronomy of Canary islands.

Blossoming almond flowers. Tenerife Island.

The vilana cake is a traditional cake with a very smooth taste and texture that we can find in every typical Canary feast, like feasts of artisans, school's feasts, family celebrations, romerias...this delicious dish is also so easy to do! Today I bring to you the vilana recipe of my mother.

ingredients

Ingredients:

• 250 g.of flour
• 200 g. of sugar (or according to your taste) 
• 500 g. of potatoes
• 30 g.  of royal yeast
• 6 eggs
• 150 g. of butter
• 200 g. of almonds
• 200 g. of currants
• 1 spoonful of cinnamon
• 1 lemon zest

Preparation:

1º- We peel the potatoes and we put them to cook. Once they're ready, we mash them with a fork.

2º- In a bowl, we put the mashed potatoes with sugar, the butter, the eggs, the cinnamon and we mix it all well.

3º. Add the sifted flour, the yeast, the almonds (that we previously peeled and minced in not so small pieces), the currant and the lemon zest. Mix it all well.

4º-  Put some butter on the interiors of a rectangular baking pan in order to not let stick our cake to the pan and we put our dough inside of it, and decorate the surface with almonds (no need to peel or mince them here).

5º- Bake it in a preheated oven at 150° Celsius for about an hour. We will keep an eye to the oven every time, because as we all know every oven it's a world of its own. If we see that it's getting too much golden brown on the surface, we can cover it with an alluminium foil or a baking sheet, and we'll just keep baking. To be sure that our cake is ready, we'll put a kitchen needle of a knife inside of the cake, and if it get out of it clean, then the cake's ready!

6º- Let it cool until it's warm, then put it out of the baking pan, and let it cool completely on a rack, and if you can, try to resist the urge to eat it until it's cool!

Enjoy it!

AnGie