A classic Polish yeast cake, pronounced “dhroz-djoo-vka,” is typically consumed on Sunday afternoons with a cup of tea or coffee. It is often consumed in various forms at Christmas and Easter. Since then, I’ve been creating cakes for my friends in locations all over the world, including the Negev Desert in Israel, where I utilized a solar oven and baked it for six hours. This was the first cake I ever managed to prepare successfully (at the age of 13).
| Prep Time: | 1 hr |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr |
| Additional Time: | 20 mins |
| Total Time: | 2 hrs 20 mins |
| Servings: | 24 |
| Yield: | 1 9×13-inch cake |
Ingredients
- ½ cup whole milk
- 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 2 (0.6 ounce) cakes cake yeast
- 1 ⅓ cups margarine
- ½ cup dry bread crumbs
- 4 eggs
- 1 ⅛ cups white sugar
- 8 cups all-purpose flour
- 4 teaspoons vanilla sugar
- 1 cup whole milk, or as needed
- 6 cups fresh plums, pitted and quartered
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup butter
- ½ cup white sugar
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon (Optional)
Instructions
- In a saucepan over very low heat, warm up 1/2 cup of milk to no more than 100 degrees F (38 degrees C); stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Remove from heat and transfer to a bowl. Crumble the cake yeast into the milk mixture, and gently stir until the mixture becomes creamy. Cover the pan with a cloth, and set aside in a warm place until the yeast forms a spongy texture, 20 to 30 minutes.
- Melt margarine in a saucepan over low heat; remove from heat and allow to cool to lukewarm.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9×13-inch baking dish, and sprinkle with bread crumbs.
- Place eggs and 1 1/8 cup sugar into a blender, and process until the mixture is yellow and fluffy. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together 8 cups of flour with vanilla sugar. Stir in the egg mixture, activated yeast mixture, and lukewarm margarine; start kneading 1 cup milk, or as needed, into the dough, a little at a time, until the dough stops sticking to your fingers and becomes smooth and even. Knead for at least 15 minutes, working to incorporate as much air as possible into the dough as you knead.
- Press the dough evenly into the prepared baking sheet, and arrange the plums over the top of the dough. Set aside.
- In a bowl, cut together 1 1/2 cup flour, the butter, and 1/2 cup of sugar with a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles fine crumbs; sprinkle the streusel mixture over the plums. Dust streusel with cinnamon, if desired.
- Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes.
- Original recipe makes an 11×13-inch cake or 2 loaves. Use plain white flour, type 450 if you have it–or Maka Tortowa if you happen to have a Polish grocery nearby!
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 415 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 61 g |
| Cholesterol | 43 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 8 g |
| Saturated Fat | 5 g |
| Sodium | 179 mg |
| Sugars | 19 g |
| Fat | 16 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
The cooks notes says the original recipe makes an 11×13 cake. I believe this is a misprint. Even at 11×15, there is more cake than others of this style. I use a 12×18 sheet cake pan.
If I use dry yeast, how much would I use
Good recipe, it came out nice! Two important points though: the amount of dough turns out to be enough for a cake amost double the size. As it is in the recipe it would overflow the tray and shed plums to the sides. Also: is it absolutely vital that an amount of milk/water is more precisely specified for the kneading phase. For a non-expert “as needed” doesn’t make any sense, and the level of moisture achieved is critical for a good drozdzówka, because if too dry it’s miserable. Ciao!
I’ve been looking for years for a recipe for a cake made with yeast, longing to replicate one we used to get all the time from the bakery in the Polish neighborhood where my father lived. I was so excited when I found this one, but alas, this came out more like a heavy bread than a cake. I think I’ll try it again someday, using half the flour and double the milk. Also, the instructions say to “knead in as much air as possible,” but as a cooking technique, kneading is about pushing air out, not incorporating it in. So I’m not sure what the author means by that. I think if this were more of a batter it might be a good recipe.
We have corrected the yeast amount to two (0.6-ounce) cakes of fresh yeast.