We made this cake after going on the marvellous Berlin
Mitte Food Tour. Our first stop on the tour was at Lindners
deli. Originally a butter maker, Lindners have branched
out to providing many high quality foods, amongst which Bastian
was enthusiastic to have us sample their Butterkuchen. He
sent us the link above after the tour and here we've
modified it to be as close as possible (we think) to the
Lindners version.
Makes ~12 small cakes.
Requires a Kenwood Chef or equivalent or lots of work
hand-kneading gloopy dough.
Ingredients
For the dough:
65 ml milk
75 gm unsalted butter
250 gm plain flour
100 gm caster sugar
0.5 tsp salt
1.25 tsp fast acting dried yeast
1 egg
For the topping:
75 gm butter
60 gm caster sugar
0.5 vanilla pod
25 gm flaked almonds
Method
Place the milk and butter in a bowl, heat in a microwave
for 40 seconds and then blend.
Add the flour, sugar and salt to the same bowl and blend
the lot together.
Add the yeast and blend.
Lightly beat the egg and add it also.
Transfer this mixture to a stand mixer with a dough hook
and knead for 8 minutes or more at high speed; the mixture
will make a very sloppy dough.
Wrap the dough in cling film and put in a warm place to
rise for 45 to 60 minutes; it should approximately double in
size.
If there is time, transfer the dough to a fridge for an
hour to firm up.
Pre-heat the oven to 200 C.
Place a large piece of greaseproof paper on a work surface,
dust it with flour and roll the dough out on the greaseproof
paper to around 5 mm thick.
Transfer the dough, on the greaseproof paper, to a baking
sheet and leave to rise a little more for ~30 minutes.
Cut the butter for the topping into 5 mm cubes.
On one half of the dough, make indentations with your
finger or the wrong end of a knife (see picture).
Insert half of the butter cubes into the holes you've just
made.
Take the other half of the dough and lift it on top of the
section you've just impaled with butter.
Repeat the impaling/inserting process with the new layer.
Put the sugar for the topping into a bowl.
Split the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds into the
sugar.
Add the flaked almonds to the bowl with the sugar and
vanilla and mix together.
Sprinkle this mixture evenly over the dough.
Cook in the oven for 12 minutes: it should come out golden
but not browned.