A dessert on my blog?! A cake?! Even I am surprised. The truth is I am not a cake baker by any standard. And I am immensely jealous of people who bake cakes with effortless grace. In fact, I can’t bake a cake to save my life and every time I naïvely embark on doing it I fail miserably… but I can bake this! A gooey, oozy and boozy chocolate indulgence. Oh yes.
Dessert
This is a traditional Christmas dessert I have grown up with. It’s a kind of Pain Perdu (or French Toast), soaked in a sweet syrup with cinnamon. The main difference is that Pain Perdu is soaked in egg and ‘Rabanadas’ are soaked in milk and then coated in egg. And one is mostly eaten at breakfast, whilst the other is a dessert. They are usually fried and the syrup is mainly made of sugar and cinnamon. My Mum and I decided to make some changes and make them slightly healthier by cooking the ‘Rabanadas’ in the oven and adding some interest to the syrup. For this, we took inspiration from a recipe from one of my favourite blogs (As Minhas Receitas) by a wonderful Portuguese cook, called Joana Roque. We made some changes to the syrup, the main one replacing the raisins (because they’re not my favourite thing) with chopped dried figs (which are one of my favourite things).