Vasilopita

An orange butter cake with a wrapped coin baked into it, where the coin goes in from underneath after the batter is in the tin.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (butter), dairy (milk).

Ingredients

• 250 g butter, softened
• 300 g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 400 g plain flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 150 ml orange juice
• zest of 2 oranges
• 100 ml milk
• 1 teaspoon ground mahlepi
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 coin, scrubbed and wrapped in foil
• icing sugar and flaked almonds, to finish

Method

1. THE COIN GOES IN FROM UNDERNEATH, after the batter is in the tin, pushed up through the base with a finger and the batter smoothed over. Dropped in from the top it sinks to the bottom and sits in one known place, which spoils the point of it; pushed in from below it ends up somewhere in the lower middle and nobody knows where.
2. AND IT IS WRAPPED IN FOIL, TIGHTLY, with the edges folded under. Unwrapped it tarnishes against the batter and flavours the crumb around it metallic. Say that it is in there before anybody eats a slice.
3. THE MAHLEPI IS WHAT MAKES IT THIS CAKE and not a plain orange sponge. A teaspoon in a cake this size -- more and it turns bitter and faintly medicinal, which is the commonest fault.
4. Butter and sugar beaten 8 minutes until very pale and light. This is the only aeration there is beyond the baking powder.
5. Eggs beaten in one at a time, each disappearing before the next.
6. Orange zest, vanilla and mahlepi beaten in.
7. Flour and baking powder sifted together, then folded in alternately with the orange juice and milk -- a third of the flour, half the liquid, and so on, finishing with flour. Folded, not beaten.
8. Into a lined 26 cm tin and levelled.
9. THE WRAPPED COIN PUSHED UP THROUGH THE BASE now, from underneath, and the surface smoothed over where your finger went in.
10. Baked at 175C for 50 to 55 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Covered loosely with foil after 35 if it is browning.
11. Cooled completely in the tin.
12. Dusted with icing sugar, with almonds round the edge, and the year pressed into the sugar through a stencil if you like.
13. Cut into numbered slices and handed out. Whoever gets the coin gets the coin.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Greece · All recipes