Baked a very simple German fruit cake the other day and took it with me to work. German colleagues cried a bit and gave me little kisses and hugs. All the other nations (especially the Dutchies) asked me for the recipe. Here it comes (rough English of course).
For one baking tray you need:
For the pastry
Yeast (check instruction on package for amount)
50 gr. Sugar
250 ml. Milk
480 gr. Flour
1 Pack of Vanilla Sugar
A pinch of Salt
50 gr. of Butter
Fresh Fruit cover
1,5 kg rhubarb, or apples, or plums …
For the finish crumble cover
3 big spoons of Sugar
250 gr. Flour
175 gr. Sugar
175 gr. Butter
Heat 100 ml milk and 50 gr. butter carefully at small flame until butter melts a bit and the milk is a little warm. Turn off fire, put milk-butter-mix into a big bowl, add 1 big spoon of sugar, mix with hands and then let it alone for 15 minutes at room temperature.
Then add the flour, rest of sugar, vanilla sugar, butter and milk, mix with hands till it’s a nice pastry. Cover it and let it alone for 30 minutes at room temperature. Kneat it again for a minute and roll it on the baking tray equally (works fine with your hands too).
Wash and peel rhubarb and cut it into 2 cm pieces. Sugar the rhubarb and arrange it on the pastry until its fully and generously covered. (Alternatively peel and cut apples, but don’t sugar them. And if you use plums, you don’t need to peel them but cut in little moons and sugar them depending on how sweet they are. The fun about German cake is, that its not too sweet and definitely way less sweet than Dutch pastry – so please dont exaggerate with the sugar)
For the crumble mix 250 g flour, 175 g soft butter and the sugar in a bowl. Mix all with your hands until crumble develop. Arrange them on the fruit cover.
Put baking tray into the pre-heated oven at 200 °C and bake for 35 minutes. Cool cake before eating it.
