Női szeszély – Women’s whim cake

by | Jun 11, 2020 | Desserts

Női szeszély is an old Hungarian recipe, which was very popular decades ago. The origin of its name isn’t known, but the different versions that float around may suggest that the ingredients women used to make this cake depended on their actual (whimsical) mood.

The most varied part of this pastry is the base, some recipes call for a yeasted dough, others make it with a sponge batter. I usually favor yeast dough, but this time I chose an easy recipe of női szeszély with a baking powder batter. All you have to do is to mix up butter, egg yolks, flour and milk. I never baked this cake before, but it could change after this first successful attempt.

Női szeszély - Women's whim cake
Női szeszély – Women’s whim cake – photo: zserbo.com

Ingredients:

For the cake:

  • 50 g (~1 3/4 oz) butter
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 2 1/2 cups flour
  • 15 g (~1/2 oz) baking powder
  • 1 1/2 cups milk

For the jam spread:

  • 6-7 tbsp apricot jam

For the meringue:

  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 5 egg whites

Size of the baking pan: 23×39 cm / 9×18″

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 356°F. Thoroughly grease and flour a baking pan.

In a bowl whisk egg yolks, sugar and butter together until creamy and fluffy. Add flour, baking powder and milk, and mix together. Pour the batter in the prepared pan and bake for 15 minutes.

Beat the egg whites until foamy, gradually add powdered sugar and keep beating until stiff glossy peaks form. Remove cake from the oven. Spread apricot jam on top, then spread the stiffly beaten egg whites on the jam. Put the cake back in the oven for further 10-12 minutes until meringue becomes nice golden brown. Slice the cake until it’s hot.

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Hungarian cottage cheese

This is what Hungarian túró looks like

You often ask me what kind of cottage cheese (or curd cheese or farmer's cheese - call it what you want) I use in the recipes. In Hungary the store-bought cottage cheese is dry and crumbly as you can see in the picture. So if a recipe calls for túró, I mean this type. If you can't obtain túró, you can try to make your own from whole milk. Click on the link below.

Metric system vs cup

In Hungary metric units are in use, all the recipes on this website are based on this system, so a kitchen scale is necessary. Since I’m not familiar with cup as a measurement unit, I convert grams to cups by using an online converter. The values in brackets, therefore, are only approximate volumes, so, please, double-check them before you start cooking.

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