Happy Easter!

I haven't had much time to bake during the last two weeks, but I wanted to post something for Easter so I searched my photo archive and found this cake. I made it for Easter last year shortly before I started my blog. My family loved it. It will cost you some time to make it, but it's definitely worth the effort! I think this cake is very suitable for easter, but it will surely also make a nice dessert at any other time of the year :-)

I think I will bake another cake this weekend at Mum's and I hope that I can take some good pictures, so stay tuned. Happy Easter to all of you!

Rice Pudding Cake with Apricots:
(Original recipe in German: www.wildeisen.ch)

For the rice pudding:
5dl milk
20g butter
50g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
200g rice (use rice which is suitable for rice pudding, Arborio for instance)

For the shortcrust pastry:
300g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
100g sugar
200g butter, cold
1 egg
3 tbsp water, cold

For the filling:
1 can of compot apricots (about 250g, drained)
1 lemon
1 small orange
250g curd
4 egg yolks
4 egg whites
40g sugar
icing sugar, for decorating

At some point while preparing the cake, preheat your oven to 200°C.

In a middle size pan, boil up milk, butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and salt while constantly stirring. Add the rice. Cover with a lid and cook for about 40 minutes until the rice is very soft, stir from time to time. Let cool.

In the mean time, mix flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the cold butter in small pieces (you can also grate it with your Rösti grater) and rub everything together with your fingers until you got a crumbly mass.Whisk together egg and water, add to this crumbly mass and quickly form a smooth dough. Wrap in wrapping film and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

For the filling drain the compote apricots and dice them, put aside. Grate orange and lemon zest and put in a bowl. Squeeze the orange and the lemon and add the juice. Add curd and egg yolks and mik well. Then add the slightly cooled rice pudding.

Line the bottom of a 26 diameter springform pan with parchment paper and butter the bottom and the edge. Roll out 2/3 of the dough so that it is bigger than the bottom of your springform pan. Line the springform pan with the dough and form an edge which is about 5cm high. Put in the fridge again for some time.

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Little by little, add the sugar and beat until you have a firm and gleamy mass. Add this and the apricot dices to the rice pudding mass and mix. Fill into your perpared springform pan.

The original recipe suggests that you form some sort of strings out of the rest of the dough which are laid out on the rice pudding mass for decoration. I left that out.

Bake on the lowest level of your oven for about 50 minutes. Let cool. Dust with icing sugar before serving.