My Lime Green Kitchen

For the cake portion, you can use any brioche type recipe. The “cake” is more like a slightly sweet bread.

Ingredients:

1 envelope Active Dry Yeast
2 T. warm water
1 tsp. salt
4 T. granulated sugar
1/4 c. milk
2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. cardamom (If you don’t have cardamon, use 1 tsp. cinnamon. Cardomom is a bit less common for most of us and seems a bit “mystical” but cinnamon will certainly work too.)
2 eggs, beaten
1 – 1/4 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into very small pieces.

Dissolve the yeast in the water and let stand til frothy.

Dissolve the salt and sugar in the milk. When dissolved combine the milk mixture with the yeast mixture.

Mix the cardamom with the flour.

Add the eggs to the yeast/milk mixture. Gradually add the flour. Knead for about 10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Add a little more flour if needed but leave the dough slightly on the sticky side. Just as the dough is almost ready, add the chopped butter and knead only until the butter is incorporated into the dough.

Turn the dough into an oiled bowl, loosely cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour in a warm spot.

When the dough has doubled in bulk punch it down, cover and place in the refrigerator overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Roll the dough out to a 8 x 20 inch rectangle. Spread the almond filling(recipe below) out in the middle of the rectangle along the whole length, leaving about 1 inch on each side. Fold the length of the dough over the filling and roll up tightly, leaving the seam side down. Turn the roll into a circle, seam side down and put one end inside of the other to hide the seam, and seal the circle. Place the cake on a baking sheet and let rise, loosely covered with plastic wrap, for 45 minutes or until doubled in bulk.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown (seems to only take about 20 minutes for me).

When the cake cools, spread on some of the glaze (recipe below). Decorate with the colored sugars and drizzle some of the thicker glaze onto the cake.

For the Almond filling:

1 can almond paste
1/2 stick butter
2 c. dry bread crumbs
1/3 c. sugar
1 tsp. almond extract

This gets real thick and it is better to use as stand mixer.

Mix the almond paste and butter. When totally mixed, add the bread crumbs, sugar and almond extract.

Glaze:

1 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp. melted butter
Half & Half to make the glaze the consistency desired
1/2 tsp. almond extract

NOTE: Because I love lots of icing/glaze, I double this recipe.

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