Plum & Grape Hencleș (Transylvanian Cake)
Hencleș (Hanklich) is a dessert with German origins prepared in many Transylvanian households with sweet leavened dough, fruit (apples, plums, grapes, cherries), and an egg and cream crust.
Ingredients
The dough:
- 150 ml milk
- 4 g dry yeast
- 350 g flour
- 50 ml oil
- 1 egg
- 70 g sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 tsp lemon zest
The semolina cream:
- 5 eggs
- 150 g heavy cream
- 100 g sugar
- 50 g semolina
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 10-12 large pitted plums cut into quarters
- black grapes
Instructions
For the dough:
- Warm the milk (37° C/100° F) and dissolve the yeast.
- Add the flour and the rest of the ingredients and knead by hand (or with the dough hook of a planetary mixer - a crucial gadget for dough!) until you get a stretchy dough.
- Let the dough rise for an hour or until it doubles in volume.
- Roll the dough into a rectangle 0.7-1cm (~1/3 of an inch) thick and place in a tray lined with parchment paper. Place the fruit on top of the dough.
For the semolina cream:
- Whip the eggs and cream. Add the sugar and vanilla essence, and, finally, gradually add the semolina. Homogenize and pour the composition over the fruit.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C/356° C for 30-35 minutes.
- After baking, if you are patient😋, let the hencleș cool, then slice, and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Notes
1. The ingredients provided are sufficient for a 30 x 40 cm (12 x 16-inch) pan. The pan shown in the pictures is smaller because I baked two trays of Hencleș.
2. The dough rises perfectly in a bowl greased with some oil and covered with (don't laugh!) a disposable shower cap (don't throw it away when you get it at the hotel in your cosmetic kit! It will make a difference, I promise!).
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!