Juicy punch cake with spelt flour

This is my favorite cake. It is the king among the cakes in our family. We fight for every single piece of this delicious treat at every family celebrations. Instead of fighting, I decided to learn how to bake it at home. I made few versions of the punch cake, and I definitely fell in love with this one – punch cake with spelt flour and syrup from canned blueberries.

Juice from canned blueberries (or sour cherries) gives lovely color to sugar glaze and syrup. If you have a canned fruit preserved in rum, you also have the ideal ingredient for syrup. Thanks to the spelt and whole-grain flour, this punch cake is rich and more nutritious.

The most important step is soaking the cake layer, so pay attention to it. Juicy center is the best part of the cake.

The cake layers are spreaded with a sharp jam. The best one is raspberry or redcurrant jam (without grains). The jam layer isolates moisture of the middle cake layer. It is important to give the cake a generous jam layer.

The juicy spelt punch cake recipe. Here you are.

Ingredients (serves 12 to 14)

Preparation: 1,5 hour + 40 minutes baking + 8 hours chiling

Dough

• 6 eggs
• 120 g cane sugar
• 120 g whole-wheat all-purpose flour
• 60 g whole-spelt flour
• 2 tsp baking powder (if you use only all-purpose flour, don’t use baking powder)
• 1 tbsp lukewarm water
• bit of olive oil
• lemon zest – optional

Syrup

• 1 tbsp rum or 2 tbsp juice from canned fruit (blueberries/sour cherries preserved in rum)
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 150 ml water/unsweetened tea
• 100 g cane sugar

Sugar glaze

• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 80 g icing sugar, sifted twice
• 1 tsp juice from canned blueberries

Other

• 1 redcurrant or raspberry jam
• 20 g 70% chocolate – optional

Instructions

Dough

Separate egg yolks from egg whites. In one bowl, beat 40 g of sugar with egg whites until soft peaks are formed. In another bowl, whisk rest of the sugar (80 g) with the egg yolks until fluffy and thick mixture is formed. Add lemon zest (optional), water and oil to the egg yolk mixture. Mix thoroughly. Fold egg whites into egg yolk mixture. Gently fold in about one quarter of the egg whites at a time.

Preheat the oven to 180° C.

Sift the flour together with the baking powder and fold it gradually into the dough.

Line the baking pan (20 x 20 cm) with baking paper, pour over half of the dough and bake it in the oven for 20 minutes. Once baked, remove the cake from the oven and loosen it from the pan. Remove the baking paper and transfer the cake to the cooling rack.

Bake the other half of the dough and let it cool down. While both cake layers are cooling down, make syrup.

Syrup

Pour all the ingredients into the pot and bring to a boil. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Remove the syrup from heat and let it cool down.

Cut one cake in half and generously spread both halves with jam. Soak the remaining uncut cake layer in the syrup (the one that is not spreaded with jam). Let the cake layer soak for a while in the syrup. Turn it on the other side and let it soak again. Dock the cake with a fork to get the juice into every pore of the cake.

Assemble the cake. Begin with cake layer with spreaded jam (jam side up). Then, put the soaked cake layer on it and put the last cake layer with jam (jam side down) on the soaked cake layer.

Put baking paper on the top of the cake, place a cutting board on it, and load it with heavy books to get the cake layers together. Put it all (yes, with the books :)) in fridge and let it cool for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.

Make sugar glaze the next day.

Sugar glaze

Mix together sugar, lemon and blueberry juice until sugar dissolves. You can also heat the mixture (using small heat) to speed up the process of dissolving. Let it cool down.

Remove the cake from fridge. Remove the load (books and cutting board) from the cake and pour sugar glaze over the top of the cake. Spread the glaze evenly. Let it cool down in the fridge again, until the glaze sets.

To decorate the cake with chocolate (optional) – melt the chocolate in the water bath and drizzle over cake. Let it set.

Once the glaze and chocolate is set, cut off the edges of the cake. Vertically cut the cake in half and each half cut into 6 or 7 equal portions. Store in a fridge.

Punch cake with spelt flour is ready. Enjoy it!