Albanian Revani Cake

A slice of diamond shaped revani cake on a square plate, next to the tray where cake was baked. There's a rose in the background too.

Albanian revani cake is a spongy cake, made with few ingredients and soaked in syrup. The traditional version of this recipe doesn't have semolina like some of the other Mediterranean counterparts.

Course Dessert

Cuisine Albanian, Mediterranean

Keyword Albanian revani cake

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 40

Cooling time 9

Total Time 55

Servings servings

Calories 388kcal

Author Sonila

Equipment

1 hand held electric mixer
1 glass mixing bowl
1 spatula
1 11x8 rectangular baking dish

Ingredients

Cake Batter

2 cups flour
6 eggs
1.5 cups sugar
3 tbsps corn starch
1 cup avocado oil any vegetable oil works as long as it is odorless
1 cup yogurt I used Greek yogurt
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

Syrup

5 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Cake Batter

Mix the dry ingredients, flour, corn starch, baking powder and baking soda with a pinch of salt. Set aside.
Add eggs to mixing bowl one by one. Use the handheld mixer to whisk the eggs until they become creamy and volume increases. Only then add sugar and continue mixing.
Slowly add yogurt and mix then add avocado oil (or your favorite vegetable oil) and mix. Once they're all incorporated, start spooning over the dry mix little by little with one hand as you mix with the other. Once you have added all the dry mix, the batter should be ready. You can use a spatula to do the last mix and scrape the sides.
Butter and flour the baking dish to prepare it for baking. Pre-heat the oven to 320 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celsius).
Pour batter over baking dish, flatten with the spatula to ensure even spreading then bake for about 40 minutes. Remove baking dish from oven, turn it off and let the revani cool down.

Syrup

Add sugar to a medium sauce pot. Heat water separately on an electric kettle. Add hot water over sugar and whisk to dissolve sugar.
Add lemon juice, lemon zest, cinnamon stick and vanilla extract to syrup. Let cook on medium heat for 10 minutes. Then turn heat off and let syrup cool off.
Once both revani cake and syrup are warm, then pour syrup with a ladle over cake (revani is still in the same dish where it baked). I usually cut the cake after the first application of syrup. Then add the rest of the syrup slowly. See video for more detail on this point.
Let the revani absorb the syrup for about 6 hours or overnight before serving it. Enjoy it on your favorite holidays!! Best Wishes:). Enjoy!! Gezuar!

Video

Notes

Baking tray - use a round or rectangular baking tray. Keep in mind volume of dish, if it's too big, you need to make more cake batter otherwise the cake will be too thin.
Baking dish I used has dimensions 11x8 inches.
There are many personal preferences on the syrup, some people like it a lot sweeter than my syrup. So feel free to add more sugar when making syrup.
Also, soaking the cake with syrup can be a science. I personally love the cake to be soaked and have absorbed a lot of syrup but I don't want the cake to swim on syrup. However, some people like extra syrup with their cake so feel free to double the syrup recipe so you can have extra too.
Lastly, in some European countries there are mixes of baking powder and baking soda sold in one small pouch. So if you have access to that, use 1 pouch for this cake instead of measuring separately baking powder and baking soda.

Nutrition