PUMPKIN-SEED CAKE

Pumpkin-seed cake image

A deliciously rich and crumbly cake with all the goodness of pumpkin seed.

Provided by mscelery

Time 1h10m

Yield Serves 12

Number Of Ingredients 12

Ingredients

some butter for preparing the baking form
150 g walnuts, ground
150 g roasted pumpkin seeds, ground
6 whole eggs
9 tbsp granulated sugar
12 g baking powder
100 ml pumpkin seed oil
4 tbsp apricot jam
600 g canned apricot halves, drained (but save the juice!)
5 tbsp juice from the canned apricot
7 walnut halves
15 g good quality dark chocolate

Steps:

You will need a special tart baking form for this cake, one that is typical in Hungarian cuisine. It is like a fluted tart form, only with a rise in the middle so that the prepared tart has a naturally higher edge to keep the filling inside. (You will use the baked tart up-side down.) The dough of this cake does not allow for you to "hand-make" this edge, like with a pie crust, as it is quite runny. (I am struggling to find the correct English term for such a baking form, if there is any, so any help would be appreciated.) Of course, the cake can be made without this form as well, using the baked apricots as topping, rather than filling.
So, first butter an approximately 28 cm diameter tart baking form, then dust with some flour. Preheat oven on gas mark 3.
Roast the pumpkin seeds in a frying pan, then grind. If you bought whole walnuts, then grind them too.
Mix the flour with the baking powder.
Beat the eggs with the sugar into a thick cream. Stir in the ground roasted pumpkin seeds and the ground walnuts, then add the flour and baking powder mix. Finally, stir in the pumpkin seed oil. You will get a quite runny cake mixture.
Pour the mixture into the prepared baking form. Put in oven and bake until golden brown about 40 minutes. Remove (but do not switch the oven off) and cool in the tin for 10 minutes, or until you can remove it from the tin, then place on a rack.
While the cake is cooling in the tin, prepare the apricots. Put the drained apricot halves into a baking tin with 3-4 tbsp juice under them, and bake until they are soft (about 15 minutes). I personally do not use any sugar, or honey, because the canned juice is usually sweet enough.
Once the cake is on the rack, heat the apricot jam in a small saucepan with 1 tbsp juice then brush it on to the middle (lower part) of the tart/top of the tart, depending on the baking form used. This will make it wonderfully moist.
Once the apricots have softened, mash them a little bit and put the mash in the middle (lower part) of the tart/top of the tart, depending on the baking form used. Let it cool.
For decoration, I divided the cake into 12 slices and used 7 walnut halves and melted dark chocolate.