Semolina Cake with Mandarins

Name: Semolina Cake with Mandarins
Ingredients: 170 g semolina; 100 g flour; 50 g sugar; 50 g butter; 3 eggs; 3 mandarins; 1 packet vanilla sugar (10 g); 2 tsp baking powder; 3 mandarins + juice of 1 mandarin; 150 g sugar

Allow me to introduce you to a juicy, fragrant mandarin cake! It has everything: mandarin segments on top, mandarin pulp baked right in, and mandarin zest for that wonderful aroma. Since nice, ripe mandarins are available everywhere right now, I think it's the perfect time to make this mandarin cake. As a base I used this classic Semolina Cake, swapping out the kefir for blended mandarins. They're not really interchangeable ingredients, but the result turned out absolutely wonderful — which once again proves that cooking is a huge playground for experimentation :-) The cake comes out fairly dense and heavy, as is typical of any semolina-based bake, but at the same time it's soft, moist, and juicy, with a rich mandarin flavor and aroma. Not surprising, really, since this cake has a whopping 7 mandarins in it!

Ingredients:

170 g semolina
100 g flour
50 g sugar
50 g butter
3 eggs
3 mandarins
1 packet vanilla sugar (10 g)
2 tsp baking powder
Syrup:
3 mandarins + juice of 1 mandarin
150 g sugar

How to cook semolina cake with mandarins

Make the mandarin syrup. Peel three mandarins and cut each one into 4 rounds.

Squeeze the juice from the fourth mandarin.

Pour 150 g of sugar into a skillet, add 100 ml of water, and bring to a boil. Add the mandarin rounds and the juice, and cook for about 10–15 minutes over medium heat, uncovered.

Make the batter. Zest one or two mandarins using a fine grater. Then peel 3 mandarins and blend them, but not until completely smooth — leave some small pieces.

Add the semolina, stir to combine, and let sit for 5 minutes to allow the semolina to absorb the liquid and swell.

Beat the eggs thoroughly with a hand mixer, gradually adding the sugar and vanilla sugar.

Add the melted and cooled butter and the zest, then beat briefly to combine.

Mix the flour with the baking powder. Add it to the beaten egg mixture in batches, gently folding it in with a spatula using bottom-to-top strokes.

Then add the mandarin-semolina mixture and gently fold it in with the spatula as well.

Grease a baking pan with butter (my pan is 20 cm in diameter). Arrange the mandarin rounds from the syrup in the bottom of the pan (set the syrup aside).

Pour the batter over the top, place in an oven preheated to 180°C, and bake for approximately 40–60 minutes.

Let the cake cool until just warm, then poke holes all over it using a bamboo skewer or a toothpick. Thoroughly soak the cake with the remaining syrup, then let it cool completely (it's best to leave it overnight).

Flip onto a plate and decorate as desired. I dusted mine with powdered sugar and, of course, decorated it with mandarins too :-) This mandarin cake turns out incredibly moist, juicy, and bursting with rich citrus aroma!