Eggless Italian Rose Cake ~ Torta de Rose

It's been two months since I have participated in the Baking Eggless Challenge. I don't think I should elaborate the reasons for it, however this month as soon as I saw the recipe, I knew I had to try it. Just like I have mentioned before, yeast is something that I love to play with. So since it was a recipe with yeast, I just had to try it. Just a couple of days back, I posted the Bavarian Dumplings as a part of another challenge and here I am with another yeast bake... hehe...

Gayathri challenged us to baking the beautiful looking Italian Rose Cake - please don't get confused by the name, it is not a cake, but it is a filled yeasted rolls, shaped to look like roses. The link that she provided was this, which was actually lengthy, uses a lot of eggs and sounded so complicated that I was thinking many times on whether I should attempt it. After a lot of googling and searching around for a simple recipe, I landed up here and used this recipe as a base to convert it into eggless. I guess I will just let the pictures do the speaking! I halved the recipe because I wasn't very confident, mainly because it was the first time I was working with active dry yeast! All my previous bakes were with instant yeast and I am pretty confident about it now, but I was really apprehensive about the dry yeast and whether it would give me the desired result. Throughout the whole process, I was having a tough time worrying whether I would have a failed recipe, but Alhamdulillah, I must say that I loved what I saw at the end! I guess as I put down the recipe, I will put down my notifications so that nobody goes through the anxieties that I went through... hehe...

Eggless Italian Rose Cake
Makes 8 (Serves 4)
Recipe adapted from here




Ingredients:

1 tsp active dried yeast
1/4 cup warm milk
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour *
1/8 cup sugar
3 tbsp butter, melted
1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 tsp salt

For filling:
3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp sugar

Method:

Dissolve the yeast and milk in a large bowl. Stir in 1/4 cup of flour and 1 tbsp butter. Close the bowl and allow to stand for 10 minutes. Now add in the remaining flour and all other ingredients and slowly knead on a floured surface to make it a soft, non-sticky dough.

*If the dough is sticky, then add in some flour to take out the stickiness. I added two tablespoons of flour to get rid of the stickiness.

Set aside the dough for an hour till doubled. Grease well a 9 inch pan with butter.

Punch down the dough, bail in on a clean surface to a big rectangle shape. Spread in the butter and sugar. Roll from one side and cut into eight pieces. Place one in the center and the others around it to represent a rose. Leave aside for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes. Cool in the pan. Slowly release from the pan using a knife or if serving immediately, you can pull out one rose and enjoy it with a cup of warm milk - bliss!!!


Notes:

1. Since it was my first use of active dried yeast, I was seriously worried about the lack of puffing up that I had seen that came so well with instant yeast. I would suggest not to worry, the end result was just so good that it took away all my anxieties. I suppose that active yeast works slow when compared to instant yeast, and that explains the extra time of resting required.
2. The quantity of butter and sugar used for filling was minimal. You can add more as per your taste buds. You can even use crush nuts or dry fruits as filling.
3. To make it look prettier, you can dust generously with icing sugar as well.

To have a look at the other challenges I have participated in the Baking Eggless Group, you can check it out here!


Normally, I start my posts with stories, for this one, I guess I will do the opposite, I will end with one. I baked these at night so that I would have a handy breakfast. The first person who exits out in the morning is my recently employed B - Alhamdulillah!!! - and he pulled out two rolls for himself, packed them in a foil and carried it with him to the office. When he was enjoying this with his cup of chai at his desk, a couple of colleagues came down and looked at the rolls. They immediately asked him, "Store bought?" He replied, "No, home made..." Before they completed their gasp, he continued, "My sister baked them..." "Oh wow, they look like store bought!!!"

*Goosebumps* Hehe...

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