Hi,
this is the official cake of my home town Slatina. Zahanek cake is a decadent chocolate cake with lots of eggs and not so much flour. I made it completely gluten free, but you can make it with normal cake flour.

Zahanek cake

The base

10 eggs
6 Tbsp sugar
4 Tbsp flour (gluten free)
4 Tbsp ground walnuts(or hazelnuts)
3 rows (150g) of chocolate (in original recipe it says ground chocolate, but I melted mine)
pinch of salt

Separate the eggs. Then make snow from egg whites with a pinch of salt. In separate bowl combine egg yolks and sugar and mix until foamed. I melted the chocolate and when it cooled down a bit I added it to the egg yolks. Then I added 2 Tbsp of egg whites and folded that in the eggs and chocolate. I mixed in two by two spoons of ground nuts and after that slowly folded in with the rest of the egg whites. Then I added two by two spoons of sieved flour and folded in until the batter was smooth. Be careful to slowly fold in the flour. Pour the batter to the greased and floured cake rim and bake on 150°C (300°F) for somewhere between 25-30 mins. After the cake is finished baking, take it out of the rim and let cool on cooling rack, then cut it into three layers (I did mine in two layers).

The cream

2 egg yolks
2 Tbsp flour
4 Tbsp sugar
200 g butter room temp. (original recipe uses 150 g of butter, but i adjusted it to my taste)

Combine all of the ingredients in a skillet and cook on the medium to low heat until the consistency of pudding. At the moment it starts to come together you have to whip like mad man in order to prevent it from sticking and burning. It’s a bit of a workout, but worth it 🙂

Let the cream cool COMPLETELY. Don’t even try to mix in the butter until the cream is completely cooled down. Then when it’s cooled down you take the room temperature butter and mix it in the cream until smooth. I first made the cream as original recipe, but decided that it needed bit more butter so I added 50 more grams of butter and 1 Tbsp of bourbon vanilla sugar.

The glaze

chocolate
sugar
water

Combine all ingredients and cook until desired consistency then spill over cake.

I don’t have the right amounts for original glaze, so I made mirror chocolate glaze instead. But from my experience it is usually 2 rows of chocolate (100 g chocolate), cup of water and 2-4 Tbsp of sugar. It’s how Mum would make her glaze. Although instead of chocolate, show puts cocoa powder and a Tbsp of rum. Makes excellent glaze.

Cake folding

So take first layer and put a good nob of cream on it then spread it evenly. Then put second layer on top and put enough cream on it. If using three layers then do the same with the third one. After all layers have been used, put the crumb coat on the sides and spill the glaze over the cake. Decorate per your taste.

Enjoy! 🙂