A syrupy semolina cake, with the unique flavor of coconut!
ingredients for 8 generous servings (cost about 8€ with organic ingredients)
for the cake
- 185 g semolina flour
- 65 g pastry flour
- 135 g butter
- 150 g sugar
- 100 g shredded coconut + extra for sprinkling on top
- 220 ml milk
- 8 g baking powder
- 1 g salt
- zest from half lemon
for the syrup
- 185 g sugar
- 250 ml water
- 25 ml lemon juice
- peels from 1/2 lemon
A vast category of Greek desserts, that we Greeks love very much, are the so called “syrupy”. They are normally based in various versions of sponge or butter cakes, that get basted with a generous portion of syrup, as soon as they come out of the oven.
One of them is the “revani”, mainly of oriental influences, made with semolina flour or a blend of semolina and wheat flour. The coconut flavored version that we present you here, very common in the island of Corfu, is eggless and butter based.
So to make the coconut revani, we begin by the syrup.
We place all the ingredients in a saucepan, we bring to a boil, then we simmer for a few minutes, until the syrup thickens. We remove from the heat, we cover with a lid and we let the syrup cool completely.
To make the cake, we begin by soaking the shredded coconut inside the milk. Meanwhile, in a pan we melt the butter, then we add the sugar, the zest, the soaked coconut with the milk, and finally the flours and the baking powder, already sieved and mixed together. After each addition we mix thoroughly so that all ingredients are well blended and we end up with an homogeneous batter.
We transfer the batter to a 23 cm round tin cake, previously buttered and floured and we bake at 185 o C (static function) for about 45 minutes.
As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, we cut it in squares and pour the syrup over it slowly, one ladle at a time, adding every next ladle after the previous one has been well absorbed by the cake.
We wrap the cake tin with cling film and we let the cake soak well in the syrup inside the tin, until it cools completely (at least 1 hour), before unmolding.
We decorate by sprinkling the top of the cake with extra shredded coconut.
