Cakes #208 and #209 - Buns and Bananas

#208 Dallas Bun Boston Cake* (and some Dallas buns).
#209 Spicy Banana Bundt Cake.

*sweet buns filled with a mixture of quark, syrup and vanilla - and a cake made of the buns. In Finland those buns are called Dallas buns and a cake made of sweet buns (they can be cinnamon buns as well) is called a Boston cake so the sweet bun cake must therefore be called Dallas Bun Boston Cake...

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Dallas Bun Boston Cake

Dough
300 ml  lukewarm milk
25 g fresh yeast (or 1 bag / 7 g fast action dried yeast)
100 ml sugar
½ tsp ground cardamom
1 egg
100 g melted butter
about 1 litre plain flour

Filling (simply mix all ingredients together)
200 g quark
100 g butter, melted
50 ml dark syrup
100 ml granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
2 tbsp plain flour

1 egg for glazing

1. Dissolve yeast in warm milk.
2. Add sugar, cardamom and egg and mix well.
3. Start adding flour gradually.
4. After you have kneaded in about half of the flour, add melted butter.
5. Knead in more flour until your dough is not sticky any more but still soft. It is better to leave the dough a little too soft than make it too dense as the cake will be too dry and hard after baking.
6. Leave the dough to rise in a warm place until double in size, for about half an hour.
7. Line a springform pan ( Ø 28 cm) with baking paper. My favourite way to do this is to wet a piece of baking paper and crumple it into a ball to get rid of the excess water and make it softer so it is easier to line the form.
8. Roll your dough into a rectangle, about 0,5 cm thick.
9. Spread the filling evenly on the base.
10. Roll the dough into a cylinder and then cut it into slices of about 5 cm / 2" long.
11. Place the slices in the pan, side by side but not too tightly to leave some room to rise.
12. Let the cake rise for about half an hour.
13. Preheat the oven to 200 C.
14. Glaze your cake with egg and bake in the oven for about 30-40 minutes.
15. Let the cake cool completely - it is easy to remove the cake from the pan either by removing the sides of the springform or just carefully lifting the baking paper together with the cake.

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Spicy Banana Bundt Cake

150 g soft butter
200 ml granulated sugar
50 ml soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3-4 soft (overripe) bananas, mashed
100 ml corn flour
400 ml plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bread soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 175 C and grease and flour a 2-litre bundt cake pan.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, bread soda and spices in a bowl.
3. Cream together butter and both sugars.
4. Mix in eggs and vanilla extract.
5. Add the dry ingredients together with the mashed bananas and mix well.
6. Pour into the pan and bake about 1 h in 175 C.
7. Let cool completely before cutting into slices.