Placek owocowy z kruszonką (Cake with fruit and crumble)

Placek owocowy is a very popular dish in Polish families. Some recipes can be complicated, but this one is reasonably simple, and does not require a lot of preparation. In fact, this is useful for those occasions, when you don't have a lot of time, or you don't have much warning that guests will be dropping in. I prefer to use a punnet of fresh strawberries and a punnet of fresh blueberries or raspberries, but I suspect that you could substitute any fruit, and could also use this as a base for jabłecznik (apple cake) if you wanted to spend the time making the stewed apples. The fruit that you use cannot be too moist.

You can use frozen berries for the topping, but if you do, I would defrost and then dry them out a bit on paper towel. My only attempt with frozen berries resulted in the dough becoming runny during baking, and I had to bake it for an extra 40 minutes (which burnt the outside).

I borrowed this recipe from Polish Treats on Facebook, but have made a few small adjustments to suit.

It is a dense cake and is moist due to the yoghurt in the dough.

You will notice that this recipe requires plain flour and baking powder. It is a recipe from Poland, and there is no self-raising flour in Poland. I haven't tried to substitute the plain flour with self-raising flour, so cannot guarantee the outcome if you do.

Ingredients

Dough

• 1 cup sugar (I use caster sugar)

• 3 eggs

• 1 tsp vanilla essence

• 2 cups of plain flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 50g cooled melted butter (unsalted)

• 1 cup plain yoghurt (I have successfully used vanilla flavoured greek yoghurt)

• 250g strawberries (sliced)

• 250g blueberries

Crumble

• 100 g plain four (approx. 6 tbs)

• 4 tbs sugar (caster sugar is best)

• 70 g unsalted butter

• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Method

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Prepare a square or round pan 24cm. I suggest that you line the pan with baking paper to make it easier to remove the cake after baking. You may need to use some melted butter to ensure that the baking paper sticks to the pan before you add the dough.

Prepare the crumble.

Rub all of the ingredients together between your fingers until you have a fine crumble. Make sure that you have rubbed all of the butter into smaller pieces, and that there is no dry flour or sugar. Set this aside.

Prepare the dough.

Break the 3 eggs into a mixing bowl with the sugar and the vanilla essence. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla until the mixture is light in colour and is fluffy.

In the meantime, prepare the flour by adding the baking powder and flour together.

Once the egg mixture is ready, sift the flour and baking powder, and add to the egg mixture along with the yoghurt. Fold through gently until all of the ingredients have combined. Do not use the mixer and don’t overmix or you will remove the air from the egg mixture and the dough will become too dense.

Pour or spoon the dough into the pan, and cover with the berries. Then sprinkle the crumble liberally over the berries and dough.

Bake

Place this into the oven for 50 minutes. Test the dough before removing it from the oven. If the dough is still wet and sticky, you will need to bake longer. Test every 5 minutes until you are satisfied that it is cooked. If the dough is uncooked, it will flop and become very dense once you take it out of the oven.

Take the baked cake out of the oven, cool and place on a serving plate. You may wish to sprinkle this with icing sugar, however I find that this is sweet enough with the berries, sugar and crumble.

Enjoy with a long black or a cappuccino (or a tea if you prefer).

I believe that this cake can be frozen, though it has not lasted long enough for me to test this.

I have also used cupcakes and divided the dough and berries between the cupcakes. This dough made up about 10 medium sized cupcakes, but the crumble made it a bit harder to eat and you may need to consider how to ensure that the dough doesn’t stick to the paper.

The cake will keep for about a week if you store it in a covered container (and keep it away from the family).

Smacznego!