Cookaholics Bulletin Board

At Portugal day every year we've had an eggy mini-cake known as Dona Amelia cake, from the Portuguese Bakery in San Jose. My sweetie likes it quite a lot, but we have yet to find a reliable recipe for it. Only one of our Portuguese cookbooks has it, and that recipe has some problems:


1 c. sugar
1/3 c. flour
1/2 c. melted butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 c. raisins
4 egg yolks
6 egg whites
1 pinch of salt
1 lemon rind, grated
2 tsp corn syrup
Confectioners sugar

Beat egg whites until stiff. Beat egg yolks and sugar. Add cinnamon, ginger, raisins, salt and lemon rind. Mix well with the egg whites, butter, corn syrup and flour. Pour into greased muffin pan. Bake briefly at 320. Don't overbake. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar.



To which I have to ask: 1 cup sugar to 1/3 cup flour? Really? Is this a cake, or a merangue? Bake "briefly" at "320", but "don't overbake"?

Anyone have a non-disastrous recipe for Dona Amelia cakes?

I remember reading about these in a novel a while back. If my memory serves, they are not really cakes, so it does have way more eggs than flour. However my recollection is that traditionally corn flour is used not ap flour along with raisins or currants, cinnamon, honey or molasses not corn syrup. Have you looked online?

Alina,

We've looked extensively. All the recipes we've found are as untrustworthy as that one, and they're all radically different from one another. Maybe I should be searching in Portuguese.

The ones we get in San Jose definitely have corn flour in them, and are a cake in texture ... the can be picked up and eaten with fingers.. They don't have raisins or currants. They do have lemon peel.

Maybe what we like isn't a Dona Amelia cake, and that's the problem ...