Out of all the traditional Albanian or Turkish desserts I have to say revani is my favourite! I guess you can say I go through my stages of favourites, but at this point its revani…I especially love when its moist and spongy! I have two other recipes posted on here, they are for the most part the same. This one has a lemony flavour to it where as the other I add coconut and I use organic corn meal. This one is made with semolina again the corn meal and semolina is interchangeable you may use either. Will share the links for the two other recipes below.
The syrup has to be made first and ahead of time as it must be cooled from boiling before being poured to the cake.
For Syrup:
- 3 cups water
- 3 cups sugar
- juice of half a lemon
Combine sugar and water, bring to a boil and cook for about 3- 5 minutes. Squeeze in the lemon juice. Allow to cool to room temperature.
For Cake:
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup yogurt
- 1 cup light tasting olive oil
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup semolina
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1 packet vanilla sugar
- zest of a whole lemon
Beat eggs and sugar till light and creamy, add in the lemon zest and vanilla sugar. Add in the yogurt, olive oil and beat together. Sift together the flour, and baking soda ( I just whisk it together in the measuring cup), add to the egg mixture along with the semolina. Combine. Pour cake batter in a greased 9×13 inch pan. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Cut into diamond or squares.
Pour over the syrup with a ladle, the cake is very dry and will soak up all the syrup very nicely to make a moist and spongy cake. Allow the cake to rest and absorb the syrup I would say about 1/2 hour before serving. Enjoy!
That really looks good. Im kinda new to baking and cooking so i wanted to ask what is semolina and when you granulated sugar is it like icing sugar also for the lemon zest how much do u put 1 whole lemon of zest
Thank you !