Greek ravani (moist cake with semolina)

Ravani

"Ravani" is a moist cake with syrup where we replace half of the flour with semolina. Used to be a traditional cake for special occasions in Greece and I would dare to say that it is still, at least in our home. Friends like it and so do kids, so what more to ask for?
As it has an almost orange color, it could be a good candidate for Halloween cake if you add a personal touch on top :)

Ingredients

Cake

1 cup semolina (fine grated)
1 cup flour for cakes
1 teaspoon baking powder
vanilla flavour
salt
6 eggs
1 cup of sugar
3 spoons of milk
Syrop
2 1/2 water
2 1/2 sugar
5 spoons of butter
1 spoon of lemon juice
lemon zest

Procedure

Stir eggs and sugar with a mixer for several minutes (quite long, it might take 10 minutes!) until the mixture becomes quite thick (That's the big secret of success for this cake). At the end, add little by little the milk.

Mix with a spoon the rest of the ingredients for the cake and then, pour this mixture to the mixer slowly and stir for a minute at the lower speed.





Pour the result to a buttered baking dish (20cmx30cm) and put it to the oven at 175 degrees (Celsius) with air for about 30min. When done, take it out and leave it to rest for a while.

In the meantime, put in a small casserole the water, sugar and lemon zest for syrup and leave it to boil for 5min. When done, add the rest of the ingredients.

Cut the cake in pieces (square or diamond shape) and pour slowly the syrup. Leave it until all of the syrup is absorbed. The result should look like below... enjoy!   

Ravani is on the right of the above photo and despite it doesn't have a look that "rocks" :) trust me... taste "rocks" for sure!