"Karydopita" or moist walnut cake

Classic Greek cake, "karydopita", is a moist walnut cake that smells cinnamon and clove and is rich in walnuts. It's quite sweet, so adapt the recipe to your style but I will give here the one that is the typical that you will be served in a Greek house.


Ingredients
For the cake:
6 eggs
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of semolina
1 cup of grated walnuts
1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of clove powder
For the syrup:
2 cups of sugar
2 cups of water
1 spoon of lemon juice
lemon zest
1 spoon of brandy


Procedure

Prepare the cake by beating for several minutes the eggs with the sugar until it gets quite thick.
Mix in a bowl the rest of the ingredients using a spoon and add them little by little to the egg-sugar mixture.

Mix slowly and pour in a well buttered rectangular deep oven dish (approx. 20x30cm).
Bake in fan at 180 degrees of Celsius for about 30min.

Prepare the syrup by boiling in a small casserole all the ingredients, apart from the brandy, for about 5min.
When done, take it out of the fire and let it cool a bit and then add the brandy and mix. 

When the cake is done, take it out and pour on it the syrop little by little.
Let it absorb well all the syrop and cool down.

You can decorate with a chocolate topping and grated walnuts like I did this time or serve with vanilla ice-cream.